. ■ ;) i - , _ ■ 



IN THE 
RED MAN'S LAND 

By 
CLAIBORNE ADDISON YOUNG 







COPYRIGHT DEPOSE 





CLAIBORNE ADDISON YOUNG 



IN THE RED MAN'S 
LAND 

AND OTHER POEMS 



By 
CLAIBORNE ADDISON YOUNG 



Z027 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE HOLLENBECK PRESS 

1915 



Copyright 1915 






: 



DEC 2 1915 
©CLA414848 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Biographical Note v 

In the Red Man's Land 1 

Tecumseh 3 

The Yanko-Cherokee 11 

Among the Modocs 17 

The Modoc Mourner's Bench 27 

Among the Cherokees 29 

The Rail Splitters and the Cherokee Lotos .... 36 

The Muscogee in Mexico 43 

A Mass for Montezuma 51 

Among the Seminoles 56 

Among the Wichitas 64 

Among the Blanket Indians 68 

Katahdin-ward 77 

The Minister Mill 89 

To My Wife 91 

To H. H. R 92 

A Good-by Quaff 93 

To My Brother 94 

Garth to Guy 95 

Katahdin 96 

The Rolling Stone 97 

The Frogs of Boone 98 

Burial of the Lumberman's Horse 101 

The Womanly Leadeth Us 103 

The World Tussle 104 

The Peanut 106 

Mother 108 

The Aspen Tree Ill 

Alone 112 

iii 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Work 113 

The Blade of Grass 114 

Resignation 115 

Unitas et Trinitas 116 

Hymn to Virtue 118 

My Christmas 119 

A Song of Freedom 122 

Wine 123 

The Morning Glory 124 

Legend of Katahdin 126 

The Call-O-Meter 129 

The Wild Rose 130 

L'Envoi 132 



IV 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

By THE EDITOR 

One can better appreciate Mr. Young's verse with 
some insight into his antecedents, his life and his per- 
sonality. 

Claiborne Addison Young was born May 29, 1843, in 
Boone County, Indiana, near Thorntown. He came of 
a race of pioneers. He was the son of the Rev. Claiborne 
Young, who was born at Stony Creek, East Tennessee, 
and educated for the Presbyterian ministry at Maryville 
College. His mother was Mary Russell Young, born at 
Maryville, Tenn. Her brother, Addison Russell, was 
for many years a prominent judge at Fort Madison, 
Iowa. In 1831 Mr. Young's father came to Montgomery 
County, Indiana, to organize the three churches of Shan- 
nondale, Thorntown and Lebanon. It was a time when 
life in Indiana was primitive and coon skins were a legal 
tender for taxes and marriage fees. The father was one 
of the most conscientious of men and this characteristic, 
with others, the son seems to have inherited. The poet' 
was brave, patriotic, impulsive, sometimes almost erratic, 
always genuine and spontaneous. 

Captain Young served through the Civil War, enlist- 
ing at the first call with General Lew Wallace in the 
Eleventh Indiana. He afterward received a commission 
in the Eighty-fifth United States Colored Infantry, which 
he assisted in organizing, and served in that command 
until the close of the war, with credit and distinction. 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

When the war was over he returned to Wabash Col- 
lege and received his A. B. in 1869. 

After graduation he matriculated at Union Theological 
Seminary, intending to become a minister in accord with 
the tenets of that great school. But a change came upon 
his theologic vision and he entered the Harvard Divinity 
School, which he calls "The Minister Mill." Before the 
"Mill" had turned out the finished product he went to 
the forests of Maine to engage in missionary work among 
the lumbermen. 

Later he entered the Unitarian ministry, filling pulpits 
in Boston and other places in the East and the Middle 
West. 

The great griefs of his life were the loss of his wife 
and son. He died November 3, 1912, in the Soldiers' 
and Sailors' Home at Lafayette, so nobly provided by the 
state of Indiana for her veterans. 

Like Thoreau and Joaquin Miller, he loved Nature as 
God made her, uncombed, unbridled by art and unhar- 
nessed by commerce. He wandered wide, from the Maine 
woods to the plains of Texas, from the Cumberland 
Mountains and the Carolinas to the land of the Modocs. 
His view of Nature is that of Wordsworth — the Omnip- 
otent Divine Spirit ever revealing His presence in all 
forms of life. 

When one of his old professors reminded him of what 
did not happen to the "rolling stone," he replied that 
he was "not in the moss business." 

Mr. Young's sympathies were always with the "under 
vi 



BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

dog" and his heart and labors went out warmly to the 
freedmen and the red men. He loved solitude and the 
lonely places and now and then he reminds one in his 
life and his song of that other lonely poet, Richard 
Realf. Many songs, doubtless, sung themselves to his 
heart in those solitary wanderings, that never found ex- 
pression. 

His first volume of verse was published in 1897 under 
the title "Way Songs and Wanderings," and a few of 
these "Way Songs" are included in this volume. His 
letter in verse to his brother, "The Frogs of Boone," 
he recited to Emerson, who much enjoyed it, and the 
elder poet and philosopher greatly encouraged the 
younger singer. 

His love of freedom and lack of sympathy with con- 
ventions led him at times over hard and stony paths but 
he ever kept a brave heart and never lost faith in God, 
or man, or life. 

This soldier, wanderer, preacher and poet is no mere 
echo. His song is unconventional and spontaneous. As 
he traveled Life's furrowed roads, and went up the many 
hills of difficulty, he kept on good terms with truth and 
loyalty and held the faith that the word "all is good" 
had never been taken back. He has, even in forms of 
construction that are faulty, the genuine lyric spirit. His 
motto seems to have been Walt Whitman's "Allons ! Let 
us be going after the great companions." J. E. C. 



IN THE RED MAN'S LAND 

I love thy unplowed prairies, 
That avarice does not till, 
The deer that leap across them, 
That leap with unchecked will. 

I love thy forests virgin, 

By greed yet undefiled, 

Thy streams that gallop damless, 

Wild colts yet running wild. 

O Ahabs, wroth with Naboth, 
His vineyard do ye want, 
The Red Man's false accusers, 
After his blood ye pant. 

Better that the land lie idle, 
That the steed should lack a bridle, 
That deer, like petted children, 
Roam forests undefiled, 

Than the land be plowed in sin, 
Plowed only to bring gold in, 
Gold that goes only for show, 
Better as it is, I know. 

1 



IN THE RED MAN S LAND 

Better the Red Man's home, 
A little freedom to roam, 
A little freedom to be, 
Free as his fathers were free. 

He has our father's pledge, 

Let it guard him as a hedge, 

"As long as grass grows, and water runs 

It shall be his and his sons." 



TECUMSEH 

Tired of it all, of books and of college, 

Tired of hypocrites — pretenders to knowledge — 

Tired of the world, and the world's money-getting, 

Tired of life, when living is fretting, 

Tired of love that is weaker than fashion, 

Tired of a world where show is a passion, 

Tired of religion, when religion is seeming, 

Tired of life, which, at best, is but dreaming. 

So he listlessly turned away from it all, 

Little caring where his lot might fall, 

He wandered away with never an aim, 

Why should he not, whom the world does not claim? 

A certain vague hope to find somewhat better, 

Somewhere where life could be lived without fetter. 

He hunted the land for his father's kin, 
'Tis the same old story told over again : 
The taint was on all, was in and through all, 
Had the world grown old, was it true of the fall? 
Then he fled from the sound of the whistle of cars, 
To a land that belongs to the sun and the stars, 
With only a cloud now and then between, — 
That cloud is the White Man's frown I ween. 
3 



TECUMSEH 

He turned from the land of fence and of wall, 

To a land that is never bounded at all; 

From a land where "mine," with an underscore, 

Is a fence well staked with a rider o'er, 

To a land where a now-and-then rickety fence, 

Is ownership's sole and only pretense. 

This schoolboy was free from his master, the world, 

To the breeze were the sails that had long lain furled : 

That prairie out there looked an unsailed sea, 

As free as the fetterless sea is free. 

Here at last in the Red Man's home, 

He had found freedom at least to roam. 

With curious eyes he noted their ways, 

All seemed to say "we have known better days," 

He came to the Shawnees, a remnant, a tail 

Of a snake that had hissed in the White Man's trail. 

Its squirming, its wriggling is not yet done, 

'Twill cease with the set of their setting sun. 

He thought of Tecumseh, that magnanimous soul, 
A steed unbridled by white control, 
And he bowed his head to that great-souled savage 
Who fought for his home, not others to ravage. 
He thought of him, of his prophet brother, 
Of the sacred fire which none could smother, 
Of Elksquatawa, the Open Door — 
The fire ever burns on thy wigwam's floor. 
4 



TECUMSEH 

That fire shall fire the Red Man's heart, 

At his wigwam's blaze shall the White Man start. 

And he has taken the torch in his hand 

A white dead face is shown by the brand,* 

And away to the frozen lakes of the North, 

Elksquatawa is speeding forth, 

Maple of Wabash and pinewood dim, 

Friend and foe are alike to him — 

Mandan, and Sioux and Ricassee, 

Blackfoot, Algonquin, and Huron free. 

Few and short were the prophet's words, 

Short as the scream of the king of birds, 

"Drink no more rum, leave the White Man's road, 

His ways to thee are a heavy load." 

Then a movement of passion, a gesture of scorn, 

"Thus we from our lands are torn." 

Then a look to the earth, a look to the sky, 

And soul touches soul to dare and to die. 

He lights the fire on each earthen floor. 

By the beads on the white dead neck they swore. 

That the white dead face to red should turn. 

Ere the fire on the floor should cease to burn, 

Ere they from the White Man's trail should turn. 

Then to the southward again he is speeding, 

His mission alone the prophet is heeding, 



The prophet carried a corpse, or semblance of a corpse. 

5 



TECUMSEH 

Westward he speeds, where Ohio sweeps, 
Elksquatawa neither slumbers nor sleeps, 
He winds with the winding Tennessee, 
That lithely winds like lithe Cherokee. 

Elksquatawa thy coming is known, 

By the voice of a bird, on the wind hither blown, 

And Muscogee clans are alive to-night, 

And Muscogee clans are wild with the sight. 

There is the prophet, with the corpse in his arms, 

Like a careful mother tending her bairns. 

And O, the fire, the sacred fire ! 

The arrows in his ears speak his heart's desire; 

His head bent forward, his one eye beaming, 

His hair with the fire behind him streaming. 

A thousand Muscogees, not yelling as one, 

For each Muscogee is shouting alone; 

But a thousand Muscogees have sworn as one, 

And Southward the prophet is speeding alone. 

He seeks the runaway Seminole, 

Where Florida reaches an arm to the sea 

And Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Uechee 

The one-eyed prophet and white dead see. 

Ah, Elksquatawa, too ardent thy zeal, 
Too hot thy courage for the Red Man's weal. 
Hadst thou but waited thy gathering clans, 
Thou hadst not balked Tecumseh's plans, 
6 



TECUMSEH 

But damned defeat at Tippecanoe 
Paints in failure's darksome hue 
Deeds that success had gloried to crown 
And reach to latest posterity down. 

Old soldiers tell how they doggedly fought, 
How rooted like trees they were hewn from the spot. 
And some of my blood are proud to say, 
"We, too, with Harrison, fought that day." 
I were prouder to have fallen where he fell, 
Call it whim, call it fancy : I say it is well ! 
Had I hunted the world for a place to stand 
I could not have found a man more grand ! 
Had I hunted the world for a place to have died 
I could not have found a worthier side ! 

I will tell you a story as 'twas told to me — 

It happened in the nineteenth century, 

In which the lost arts have all been found, 

When the Has-been and the Will-be are all above 

ground. 
This may have been printed a hundred times, 
It may have been sung in a hundred rhymes. 
If 'tis printed I have not beheld it — 
As it was told, so I will tell it : 
'Twas a treaty, or council, something of the sort, 
Where Tecumseh stood for the Red Man's part. 
7 



TECUMSEH 

For the Whites stood Harrison and a score of others, 
After the fight the Red Men's brothers, 
Younger brothers, we sent them off from us 
With no cash in hand, but a very big promise. 
Somehow, the White man, that pink of civility, 
Had forgotten the badge of hostly servility; 
Forgotten to offer the chief a chair, 
At which some present began to stare. 
Tecumseh noticed the seeming affront, 
For he knew his own and the White man's wont. 
The interpreter said in a canting phrase, 
About the Great Father that at Washington stays, 
"The Great Father offers his son a chair." 
Tecumseh turned with a look — a look, not a stare, 
"He my father?" — his great chest swelled, it fell, it 

rose, 
"The Sun's my father; the Earth's my mother, on 

her breast I repose." 

With childish ease, with childlike grace, 

He throws him down in his wonted place. 

This is the story that was told to me, 

Would the wrappings were better, I wish it for thee. 

It is said of Tecumseh that in his last battle, 

When that murderous circle gurgled out his death 

rattle ; 
When in that narrow and narrowing round 
Of all his warriors a hundred were found, 



TECUMSEH 

Reaching his bow to a warrior he said : 

"My body shall on the field be laid, 

My spirit shall descend to my son, 

The work of Tecumseh is done." 

"By Jupiter," says Socrates, "Justice lives," 

This no doubt some assurance gives, 

If she lives with Jupiter in the clouds, 

Lives only to wrap the dead in shrouds, 

To shroud and drape with unwonted grace 

In the beauty of deeds, the passionless face ; 

Lives to furnish failure a crown, 

This were some solace in that last lying down. 

But this, even this, thou were denied 

To soothe thy baffled warrior's pride. 

Go look in the mirror of his foe's respect, 

Go read in the Annals of Neglect 

Of deeds that would reach a Spartan to fame, 

Of deeds that would brighten a Roman name : 

Place by the side of Tecumseh of history 

The soldier of '12's marvel and mystery, 

The savage who outhumaned the most humane, 

Who stopped British butchery again and again ; 

Who tossed their proffered rank aside 

And walked with his men in his manhood's pride. 

Yes, Tecumseh is this, and more, to me, 

To the White man a halt in that sweep to the sea 

That wipes out forever of the Red every trace 

And leaves naught behind, but a red dead face. 

9 



TECUMSEH 

And to-day as I pass, I now and then see 

On some stream the hut of a scattered Shawnee, 

Or one worse scattered in the white blood stream, 

And I ask, "Was Tecumseh a boyish dream?" 

I see him stand out in my boy's history book, 

See him stand forth with his grand king look, 

Looking and looming so wonderfully tall, 

Out from the feathers, the paint and all. 

And that woman, Shawnee, just now spoke so queer, 

She seemed to have known me many a year. 

"Purty well, how you get along?" 

It seemed a line from an old heart song ; 

It sent the nerves tingling adown my back, 

I wish I knew what it meant, alack — 

Such a thrilling and creeping of wonderful awe, 

Now I do not say I Tecumseh saw, 

But were there Shawnees enough for this spirit 

No fee simple title would white man inherit. 



Flitting pictures, shadowed things, 
That come and fade as in a dream, 
And should they only phantoms seem 

The fault's not vours, but him who sings. 



10 



THE YANKO-CHEROKEE 

• 
A lakelet sleeps in the snowy profusion 

Of a flock of swans in their milk-white down, 

Like sentinel ships that guard from intrusion 

The coast of some old-time sea-girt town. 

So soft on that still-bosomed lake they are lying, 
Like downfringed garment on a pure girl's breast. 

Lust and passion have you heart for trying 
To trouble and vex that calm bosomed rest? 

The wanderer looks and, in looking, lingers. 

The place of the scene steals into his soul. 
It must be so of those sweet swan singers, 

A song would burst beyond control. 

To lie thus swathed, thus bathed in beauty, 
With souls so attuned to beauty's chords, 

Chords never touched by rough-fingered duty, 
Then a song at the end, ye birds are true bards. 

But his face was swept with the old unrest 
As he turned and looked away to the West, 
For there riding fast, yes, faster than he can, 
Goes a trotting pony and a galloping man ; 
11 



THE YANKO-CHEROKEE 

Yankee fashion they call it, is it not ? 

Where a man gallops himself while his horse is in a 

trot, 
And I think it well -named, for the real Yankee 
By money worship has grown so cranky 
That to drive a bargain the king he will collar, 
He will leap over hell if the risk be a dollar ; 
Ben Franklin gone mad, every year he gets madder, 
He will fly to the moon, swim the sea in a bladder, 
The man North, South, East or West 
Who grasps for the dollar his level best. 
Should you visit the South you will be surprised 
To find they, too, have become Yankeeized. 
The Lone Star State seems Maine turned under, 
They grasp for the dollar like Franklin the thunder, 
That rider ahead seems once to have heard, 
"Time is money," yes, that is the word. 
"Those minutes ahead into cents I will make them, 
I will take them in if I once overtake them." 
He doubtless gains time, and time is money, 
But then after all it looks deucedly funny. 
That rider that rides as if counting the cost 
Well he knew was his last night's host, 
A nondescript Yanko-Cherokee, 
He had married a native woman you see, 
Which gave him a right to the fruits of the soil, 
A right to be idle, or a right to toil. 
12 



THE YANKO-CHEROKEE 

Yes, well he knew who that rider was, 
And well he knew of his riding the cause. 
Together they had argued late and long. 
For both were young and both were strong, 
And the wanderer was earnest he knew not why, 
For a feeble plaint is the Red Man's cry — 

"A white man here has no show, 

It is not the white man's country you know." 

"There is gold and silver out in those hills, 
Mines may be worked with resolute wills. 
What's opposed ? a handful of full-blooded fools ; 
Men when we know them at best are but tools. 
These railroads like levers are plying away — 
This country will see the light one day. 
Till then, a purpose that will not swerve, 
Till then, some caution and a little nerve." 

"But 'tis a law in the growth of a state 
What's under the surface comes up late, 
The shepherd pipes to the echoing hills, 
The herdsman herds, he halloos and trills, 
Then Toil plows, Toil drives the cart, 
Toil whistles and sings and builds the trade mart, 
Then comes the rush for power and gold, 
Then men, in the market, are bought and sold, 
13 



THE YANKO-CHEROKEE 

Then life's a game of money-getting, 

Then life is spent in wolf teeth whetting. 

Were not tending your cattle and tilling the soil 

Better by far that gold heat broil? 

There is gold and silver out there as you say, 

But the Cherokee full bloods say to you nay. 

Once by Savannah and swift Tennessee 
Lived and loved the wild Cherokee. 
But gold was found in the Georgia hills, 
The gold ghost haunted their streams and rills, 
Haunted each wigwam — haunted each home, 
And here to the West they were forced to come. 
Is there gold and silver out there as you say? 
These men perchance have a right to their nay. 
Does tilling the soil seem irksome cheer? 
Learn the language, be a leader here. 
Guide them upward, lead them along, 
To the weak and helpless you may be strong." 

"That all may be true and it sounds very well, 
It is hard to do, but easy to tell. 
But work for another don't bring bread, 
And an empty pocket is heavy as lead. 
I have set my stakes, I have laid my plans, 
All that I lack is a few willing hands. 
Come, say will you join our company? 
The offer is honest, the offer is free. 
14 



THE YANKO-CHEROKEE 

The way is lonely down through those hills, 
And there's many a gulch that a white man fills." 

But he turned to the left, his host to the right, 

This was the cloud that swept sun from his sight. 

"Full-blood fools," Ye are like that scene, 

Lust and passion he is liker, I ween. 

The passion for wealth, and the lust for gold 

By the peace of another is never controlled; 

A shot may down on that lakelet crash 

And the beauty forever is gone in a flash. 

A paper bullet from Washington, 

And the Red Man's peace forever has flown. 

He lodged that night at an inn of one story, 

Kept neither for love of gold nor of glory. 

It's only sign was a look it had — 

"I belong to the road, you are inward bade." 

His host was a quadroon Cherokee, 

He looked for Avarice that he did not see; 

Features cast from the mold of Rome, 

Face warm tinted as if Spain were its home. 

After a while some Cherokees come, 
Sit quite silent, look very glum, 
His host says, taking an old violin, 
"She always talks when there's no music of chin." 
His notes were not drawn from his soul's deeps 
Like that master who your heart weirdly sweeps, 
15 



THE YANKO-CHEROKEE 

The man with a manner kinglike, grand, 

The air sweeps his soul as the bow sweeps his hand, 

But this is so sweet and so melifluously ran, 

That it melted the barrier twixt man and man. 

And jokes and gossip, and stories flow free 

And the stranger was one of the company. 

A Yankee that would not swallow the world, 
A Yankee cutter with sails all furled, 
A tug that has lost its screw propeller, 
A quiet, easy sort of a fellow, 
A Yankee, the son of a missionary ; 
A Yankee's contrast, striking very, 
A Yankee married to a native woman, 
A big-souled, big-bodied sort of human ; 
Then two daughters of a French Cherokee, 
Put one for Spain, one for Italy, 
Beauty of the soft voluptuous type, 
Rich, rare, rosy, round, red and ripe, 
Seemingly saying: "See how I cling to the tree?" 
I know I am beauty, but I'm not for thee." 
The wanderer once, might have been 
More than a looker on this scene. 
I only know he went his way, 
Nor seeming cared at all to stay. 
He went his way, sad-browed, sad-eyed, 
That seemed to say, "This, too, I've tried." 
16 



AMONG THE MODOCS 

Could I stand by the shores of a world 
Where civilized man had not been, 

After sailing and sailing, see sails all furled. 
L'y shores unpolluted by sin. 

That ne'er had been fouled by his eating, 
That ne'er had been fouled by his drinking, 

Nor cursed by his shams and his cheating. 
Nor cursed by the craft of his thinking. 

Methinks could I see such a world, 

The old would pass away 
Into night and chaos hurled, 

While the new would usher the day. 

Such a world Columbus saw, 

Yes, just such a world I wis, 
'Twas not without blemish or flaw, 

Eut free from the taint of this. 

Could I call the centuries back, 
Could I say to the years, "Be bid ! 

Birth morn of Nations be black ! 
In the womb of night be hid!'' 
17 



AMONG THE MODOCS 

Could the stone go back to the quarry, 
The timber go back to the tree, 

And the rivers be loosed from their fetters 
And leap away blithe to the sea. 

Methinks the old world would laugh 
To be rid of her burden of sin, 

"Ha, ha, on the morrow 
My new life I begin." 

The ponderous wheels of state, 

The roar of traffic, I think, 
After all is said and done 

But furnish us food and drink. 

Food and drink, — what's left over 

Goes for feathers and paint, 
With now and then a dollar 

To make man into a saint. 

The food and drink of the Old Time 
Were water and maize and game. 

Would that some King of the New Time 
Would bring them back again. 

The feathers and paint of the Old Time 
At the worst were a savage show, 

The feathers and paint of the New Time 
These you may easily know, — 
18 



AMONG THE MODOCS 

Houses, ground and carriage, 

Equipage, and dress, 
The feathers and paint of the New Time 

Are they anything more or less? 

The feathers and paint of the savage 

Were his delight and show, 
And scores of civil savages 

Strut in brown stone I know. 

And then the New Time religion, 
The machinery by which it is done, 

The daily and nightly oiling 
It takes to make it run, 

Stones piled upon stones, 

The bells' deep sound, 
The ponderous ritual, 

And the sermon profound. 

On the wheels of this complex engine 
Write this from the Judean youth, 

"They that worship the Father 

Must worship in spirit and truth. 

Then bring the untempled worship, 
The Great Spirit, felt and seen, 

And which of the twain is the nearer 
The words of the Gallilean? 
19 



AMONG THE MODOCS 

Could I call the centuries back, 

Could I say to the world "Be bid! 

Birth-morn of Nations be black! 
In the womb of night be hid!" 

Instead of money-archy 

The bravest in the land should reign, 
Instead of an Age of Gold 

The Golden Age again. 

And down in the Mexican Province, 

Instead of Anarchy King, 
The jubilant years would shout 

"Again Montezuma we bring!" 

To the priest-ridden land of the South, 
Instead of wild beasts of Spain 

The years with joy would cry 
"We bring you the Inca again!" 

Were I Columbus, the good, 

With my sails in some harbor furled, 
And there lying out before me 

Asleep lay this virgin world, 

I would hurry me back to that harbor, 
And eagerly scuttle each ship, 

Vengeful my fingers would work 
Till a hole in each bottom I'd rip. 
20 



AMONG THE MODOCS 

And when I saw not a plank, 
Not a rag to carry the news, 

I would bid good-bye to the Old world 
And gather around my crews. 

I would teach them lessons of virtue, 
Yes, live her before their eyes, 

Teach them to love and cherish, 
But not to pluck the prize. 

I would dream again my Plato, 
But with eyes that opened wide ; 

And O, I would long for Plato 
To walk this world by his side. 

I would jealously guard and cherish, 

Guard like a lover true, 
And the hurts and wounds of the old love, 

I would heal in balm of the new. 

Not that I think this new world 
Was built without blemish or flaw, 

But 'twas done by Master Nature, 
Built rough by primal law. 

"Jour" work was the old world, 

Built by journeyman man, 
And the work is often faulty, 

Done to a faulty plan. 
21 



AMONG THE MODOCS 

Is this a dreamer's fantasy? 

Read Diaz and Montaigne, too, 
The real of Plato's ideal, 

Then walk the Modocs through. 

See savages not yet wholly 

By civilized vices tainted, 
Untaught as yet by teachers, 

By missionary yet unsainted. 

I have been walking their camps to-day, 
I have been living life their way, 
And I tell you here wrong has been done, 
Wrong that shames the light of the sun. 

'Tis the old, old story, a story of wrong, 

The cry of a century-burdened song, 

"The spoiler spoileth," is the cry, 

And the treacherous dealeth treacherously, 

Schonchin was chief before Captain Jack 

And some of his men, long years back, 

Were killed in a council with the whites, 

Killed when a truce should have guarded their 

rights, 
But then 'tis right for the civilized man, 
To kill a savage whenever he can. 
Discoverers found him Nature's child, 
They carried him caged, like a beast most wild ; 
22 



AMONG THE MODOCS 

Took him away from his forest retreat, 

Took him away from his home so sweet 

To a sin-tainted land, a land defiled, 

And betrayed, debauched was this forest child. 

Montezuma, The Sad, that mild good king, 

Was seized and bound like a nameless thing, 

Seized by feasters at his cost, 

Seized while acting the part of a host ; 

A king so princely at each bequest 

Kings he made of each stranger guest. 

No guests were ever treated as they, 

No host ever treated so barbarously. 

Pious Mather could pleasantly say, 
"A Pequod village was burned today, 
The English worked this morning quite well, 
Barbecued five hundred and sent them to hell. 
With prisoners 'twas quickest to feed them to fishes, 
We gave 'em to a skipper who knew our wishes." 
But they were the chosen of the Lord, 
Those heathen had only a right to the sword. 
Good Osceola, in faith of a flag, 
They seize and into a dungeon drag; 
And the haughty prince of the Everglades 
Sickens and dies in dungeon shades. 
This is a chapter in that story of wrong, 
A line of a heavy-burdened song, 
23 



AMONG THE MODOCS 

"The spoiler spoileth !" is the cry. 

And the treacherous dealeth treacherously. 

But Schon-chin dared retaliate, 

And Camby was worth a better fate, 

As for that, Captain Jack was, too, 

If we credit the words of this Modoc crew. 

Meacham dared write man on his tomb 

After he had met a felon's doom. 

The Modoc war? 'twas a promise broken, 
I know not whether written or spoken. 
The Modoc's land was good, say they, 
And Ahab wished to drive him away. 

"Land good, country warm, plenty game, 
Government try to buy dat same," 
Captain Jack say, "Well, we sell, 
You give us other country as well." 

"Go back to the mountain, no game, cold, 
Government, he give beef we're told, 
Modoc hungry, beef once come, 
Modoc think much 'bout home. 
"We no starve," say Captain Jack, 
"Tula Lake, guess we go back. 
Go there, settle there," 
Captain Jack say, "Me no care 
Settler stay, Modoc stay, 
Both stay, that's the way. 
24 



AMONG THE MODOCS 

Settler say, 'No, go away, 

Up on the mountain, go there stay.' 

Modoc hungry, no beef, game gone, 

We kill some cattle, then soldier come on ; 

Soldier come, we fight long time." 

This was the horrible Modoc crime, 

For this they were tried as a felon is tried, 

A felon too poor to buy law on his side 

Pulled and hauled from North to South, 

Stared at, gazed at, with gaping mouth, 

Twigged and pulled by the curious throng 

They would make the Modoc say something strong. 

At their coming the Indians out here were frighted, 

Preachers were called to convert the benighted. 

Says the agent, "The best Indians I have seen, 

I have never caught a Modoc in anything mean." 

This among Indians of fifty years teaching, 

This among Indians of fifty years preaching ; 

If I were a missionary I would have packed my 

traps, 
If I were a teacher I would have sold my maps. 

A lie among the Modocs is a crime against the 

state. 
A lie in their camps opens the prison gate, 
A hut half logs, half adobe rude 
Enough to give crime solitude. 
To punish a man till the "good heart" shows 
Is the penal code the Modoc knows, 
25 



AMONG THE MODOCS 

The Marshal Ipki, up and down, 

The "Eyes of the chief," patrols the town; 

Chief Scar- face, look, there's a man ! 

One to whom you pass not the hand." 

"I be chief, dese two help — " 

Bogus Charley, dandy and trim, 

Steamboat Frank, surly and grim. 

The less friction the better machine, 

This Government car glides noiseless, I ween, 

There must be no friction, I saw no oiling, 

I saw none riding while others were toiling, 

No "Salary Grabber," there was nothing to grab, 

You could write it all on a marble slab 

And hand it down, this table of stone, 

Till your children's children all were grown, 

Grown in craft, if you please grown wise, 

Grown the good old ways to despise. 

Then you must have a noise of wheels 

Instead of a heart that for them feels. 

"Republic, Liberty," — be cheated by words, 

Call men free who are driven in herds. 

But herds stampede every now and then 

And men grow back, grow w T ild again. 

The nature comes and claims her own, 

And the world turns over — Is it wiser grown? 



26 



THE MODOC MOURNER'S BENCH 

A score of dusky figures, 

A mournful plaint, a wail, 
That maid on the ground there lying, 

World sick, is she taking the veil? 

"Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya," 

The weird notes rise and fall 

Like the wail of a miserere, 
Or a doomed one's mercy call. 

And that man by the maid there kneeling, 

With eyes afar in the East, 
By his wand, he seems magician, 

But his look is more the priest. 

His eyes are in frenzy rolling, 
For a moment the wail is dumb, 

"Yes, I think I see thee, 

Ah, I knew thou wouldst come." 

Then again from the depths up struggling 

Comes slow a joyful plaint, 
And the face of the maid ecstatic 

Glows like a new-born saint. 

27 



THE MODOC MOURNERS BENCH 

The wanderer is lifted and drifted, 
Adown the ocean of years 

His hardened heart is melted, 
His eyes suffused with tears ; 

The obdurate walls of his selfhood 

Melt like snow away, 
And the twilight dim of the wigwam 

Seems light of an elder day. 

"She be sick," says the Chieftain, 

"No, not sick, 
She got bad heart, want good one ; 

See, she get him quick." 



A chaplet woven from deeds, 

Is it worthy Houston's brow? 
A song rude piped upon reeds, 

You have heard many better I trow. 

Had I caught the notes that liquidly glide, 

And plash round a Cherokee's tongue, 
You had paused till a money-mad world would 
deride 
You had thought that the world had grown 
young. 

28 



AMONG THE CHEROKEES 

"0-se-oo u-na-ka/' How do you do, white man? 
This much Cherokee his tongue could span ; 
This he had learned from his Tennessee mother 
Who had played at school with the little red brother. 
Had he known the language which so musically flows, 
He had told the Cherokee all of his woes ; 
In that Cherokee country, then and there 
Had laid down forever his burden of care. 
Houston here his burden laid down, 
Nature's pilgrim, he hallowed this ground. 

O, Houston, thine the grace 

And beauty of an elder race, 

Thy Spartan virtue Indian taught, 

Could pluck the arrow hissing hot 

From out thy flesh and call it naught. 

I will not call thee Demosthenes, 

But thy tongue could whisper with the breeze, 

Could talk, too, with the waving trees, 

Could lighten with the lightning's glare, 

Dwell with the thunder, make its home there. 

Nature made and kept this man, 
Fashioned on eternal plan, 
When men would twist by rules pedantic, 
Monkeyize by tricks made antic, 
Cram and cramp by Latin, Greek, 
Shut wisdom's doors to those who seek, 
29 



AMONG THE CHEROKEES 

Then Nature came and whispered low 
"Child with me to the forest go. 
Out in those wilds the Cherokee 
My children all shall sport with thee." 
And, strange wild freak, the youthful roamer 
Companion takes, in Ancient Homer, 
And wandering, wanders with Ulysses, 
Steers safe past Scylla, voids Charybdis, 
Hears roar behind a world of storms, 
And voids the rock of false reforms. 
Sees swinish feeders turned to swine, 
"This Circe's hall was world of mine," 
He lives, not reads, Lotophagi, 
In maple shade, with half oped eye. 
He eats the Lotos, dreams and dreams, 
While rippling past go talking streams. 
Around him dusky figures float, 
The outside world, a speck, a mote, 
Forgotten are its tasks, its cares, 
Forgotten are its pleasures, snares. 
But dreams must break, and sleep must wake, 
And sleeping's but for waking's sake. 
Nature says, "This child, my own, 
Out in that world can stand alone. 
Erst he has passed his manhood's gate 
The highest honors on him wait, 
The highest honors of his state, 
Awake!" And lo, he finds him great. 
30 



AMONG THE CHEROKEES 

His social place, his high renown, 
Like nothing all he lays them down, 
Uncrowns himself with his own hands 
And, Cffisar, in his manhood stands. 
Like dust he shakes all from his feet 
And seeks again his old retreat — 
The wigwam of the Cherokee — 
No more upon the Tennessee, 
For greed had pushed him farther West 
To a new home — where may he rest ; 
The old chief welcomes, calls him son, 
He, wearied, sleeps, his world toil done, 
Lotos sleep for wrong is crying, 
The Red Man to the wind is sighing. 
The White Man's pledges all are broken, 
His race is all too oily spoken. 
"He sold our lands, he promised gold, 
But promises are lightly told. 
His words are like the wind that blows, 
We hear it, know not where it goes." 
Houston hears and heeds his cry, 
"Some how, some way I'll justice try." 
He stands where he has stood before, 
He takes his place upon that floor, 
Where he has stood up for his klan, 
The peer of any in the land ; 
But now he stands for human kind. 
The rights of man, those rights divine. 
31 



AMONG THE CHEROKEES 

He came, the courtier's ease, the grace 

In mien and figure, form and face, 

All these were his, that rare address, 

We look and straightway power confess. 

He came in dress and style superb, 

His taste, his will his only curb ; 

Next day he'd laid these all aside, 

Shook from his shoulders civic pride 

And in his savage manhood stood, 

In belted blanket, buckskin shod ; 

And yet you knew the man was there — 

The lordly mien, the kingly air, 

And through those halls, so gloomy, grand, 

He strode, a satire, this poet-man. 

His every movement, gesture, shows 

Your civilization is but clothes. 

He did his work, he went his way 

And no one dared to say him nay. 

O Houston, heart of Chivalry! 
The weak ne'er plead in vain to thee ; 
Again you walk our senate's halls, 
Echoed again the Red Man's calls ; 
Thus far the Wanderer mused and pondered, 
Wandering where Houston once had wandered. 
I've read the rest in Texan hearts, 
I've seen how quick the lifeblood starts 
At mere mention of Sam Houston's name — 
"I tell you that man was game !" 
32 



AMONG THE CHEROKEES 

And then they'd tell you how he looked, 

I wish that love could all be booked, 

And then I'd hand a hero down, 

A king who never wore a crown, 

A giant to this pigmy age 

With strength and solace in each page, 

And skimmed milk times would grow rich cream. 

But, ah, alas, I do but dream. 



"0-see-oo u-na-ka" 

White man how do you do ? 

Your asking seems so honest, 
I think I will tell you true. 

Well, I am downright sick, 
I am very feeble and faint. 

And the times out there are sick 
And there's neither sinner nor saint. 

This sickness, 'tis a lack of health, 
A kind of total unsoundness ; 

And many there be of the sick, 
With a plump and rosy roundness. 

Once a woman sick, 

Touched a man of health, 
And he turned and looked, for he knew 

That virtue had gone by stealth. 
33 



AMONG THE CHEROKEES 

And virtue has gone from us all, 

We all alike are sick; 
And unless we can touch a man, 

Soon dead will be all the quick. 

This sickness is wonderful catching, 
I don't know how I caught it, 

And I see you have it down here — 
I wonder who it was brought it. 

That heap, that tumble of bricks, 
For forty thousand was sold, 

The Cherokee hummed and hawed, 
But their Nation paid the gold. 

The chief was administrator, 

Administrator and heir. 
And so he came quietly in 

And took the lion's share. 



A village asleep on a running stream, 
So quiet you call it "Contentment's dream," 
(That house of brick for the council, is king, 
A hundred houses homage bring), 
Is the Cherokee Capital, Tahlequah, 
With the quietest look you ever saw. 
34 



AMONG THE CHEROKEES 

But then, alas, the plague is here, 

I wonder how they caught it? 

They say a man with a carpet bag came, 

Came down here and brought it. 

They have rings, and cliques, and parties down 

here 
Much the same as they have out there. 

But he sees that night, at a Cherokee ball, 
How loose on his shoulders sits this all. 
That Cherokee there, long haired and slim, 
The white man's coat becomes not him. 
The Cherokee dances, the violin squeaks, 
But that shake in his shoulders of rattling gourd 
speaks.* 

Should some one strike the chant Ya-Ho, 

Coat and trousers to breachclout would go. 

In our civil war he showed his old blood, 

Could scalp quite well, was warrior good. 

And just now when the wanderer came 

Hair down on his shoulders hanging the same, 

The Cherokee tucked his under his hat 

As saying "White man can't you leave me that?" 

The dance was timed by pebbles in a gourd. 



35 



THE RAIL SPLITTERS AND THE 
CHEROKEE LOTOS 

Klong, klong, klong, klong, 

Sound the circling mauls. 

Like curse of doom the cadence falls, 

And this is what it said, 

"By the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread." 

Klong, klong, klong, klong, 
And a score of Cherokees 
Are splitting the felled trees, 
In groups of five and four, 
Hammer away this score. 

Klong, klong, klong, klong, 

Misery seeks companion, 

The huntsman hunts alone, 

That Cherokee there would tackle a bear, 

Alone with never a fear or care. 

Klong, klong, klong, klong, 
Like Sisiphus rolling a stone, 
Each stroke seems half a groan. 
Each Cherokee gloomy and grim, 
Work is a curse to him. 
36 



THE RAIL SPLITTERS AND THE CHEROKEE LOTOS 

Klong, klong, klong, klong, 
What a tiresome sing-song sound. 
Our fathers laughed the year round, 
At the White Man's task we moan. 
Are we any wiser grown? 

Gnuow, gnuow, gnuow, gnuow, 
The turkey answer his calls, 
The deer springs up as it falls, 
The fish leaps out of the brook, 
Pierced through by the barbed hook. 

Klong, klong, klong, klong, 

Sounds the circling mauls, 

Like a curse of doom the cadence falls, 

And this is what it said, 

"By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.' 

Ka-la-sta-oo — 

And in hunting shirts red and blue, 

In single file, a jolly crew, 

And no longer a sinner, 

The Cherokee goes to dinner. 

Rattle, rattle, rattle, 
With their gossip and tattle, tattle, 
From the kitchen to and fro, 
The Cherokee women go. 
Wild onion cooked with eggs, game, 
A smoking chicken stew, — 
These wild men dine quite tame. 
37 



THE RAIL SPLITTERS AND THE CHEROKEE LOTOS 

Clatter, clatter, clatter, 
Hushed is the woman's chatter, 
And the score of Cherokees, 
Under the boughs of trees 
Smile and go to work 
Like a hero and not a shirk, 

Chickety, clickety, clink, 
Conahanu is their drink. 
Drink that needs no brewing to brew 
The Cherokee Lotos conahanu. 

Corn, the essence of corn, 
Distilled on a virgin morn, 
Corn that never has soured, 
That never has been defloured, 
Of its sweetness and its purity. 

"You conahanu drink? 
Well you like him, I think, 
You never taste him before? 
You no see out there any more."* 

The wanderer drinks 'neath the bough of trees, 
Drinks to the laughing Cherokees. 
Then he tossed off to his host 
A conahanu toast. 

* If one likes their conahanu without salt or sugar you will forget the 
white man's country nor ever care to return. 

38 



THE RAIL SPLITTERS AND THE CHEROKEE LOTOS 

"Here's to Conahanu, 

The gift of forgetting, 

All the cares of a life 

That are toilsome and fretting. 

"Here's to Conahanu 
May I cease to remember, 
That in Spring of my life 
Blew the winds of December. 

"Here's to Conahanu, 

And good-bye to all shamming, 

To a life that lives 

By life's currents damming. 

"Here's to Conahanu, 
There is strength in the tasting, 
A strength that comes not 
By life's forces wasting. 

"Here's to Conahanu, 
The simple and plain, 
The lips that taste it, 
Wish it once and again. 

"Here's a health to yours, 
A health to you, 
I drink it, my friends, 
In Conahanu." 

39 



THE RAIL SPLITTERS AND THE CHEROKEE LOTOS 

"YYa-ho-ee" 

Says mine host Cherokee, 
Reply, if you please, 
Both flowing and free. 



Often he dined on a running stream — 

"He drifted adown as in a dream, 

Civilization a baseless show, 

A surface bubble, then down we go. 

These onions wild are sweeter than tame, 

Grind, bake this corn 'tis much the same, 

Some life from the corn you take away. 

Ground and baked is the Red Man to-day. 

Civilization skims the cream 

And leaves his life a clabbered stream. 

A mountaineer was the Cherokee 
As free as the bounding Tennessee, 
Where infant hills to mountains rise 
By sucking vigor from the skies, 
Vigor that nourished the Cherokee, 
Most free of all, of peoples free. 
That vigor was virtue in the alien race, 
Which drove them from the homestead place. 
You may hear the flow of the Tennessee 
Come rippling from tongue of Cherokee, 
40 



THE RAIL SPLITTERS AND THE CHEROKEE LOTOS 

And Keowee, Flint and Tugaloo 

In his flowing accent sweetly woo. 

He was a poet and you may hear, 

As its gliding cadence falls on the ear, 

The mountains and rivers from whence he has 

sprung 
Sweetly voiced in his Cherokee tongue. 
But Government says it shall not be taught 
In schools which their own lands have bought; 
Do you wonder then that this is a bar 
To onward sweep of the civilized car? 
That car is on the White Man's road, 
And red must turn white to lighten the load. 
Make him take this, too, seize hold of his throat, 
Make him wear, force him into, the civilized coat. 
His streams are sluggish, and sluggish his blood, 
He now no longer is a warrior good. 
His streams are sluggish, yet the musical flood 
Still flows in a language the Whites call rude. 
His streams are sluggish, yet the musical flood 
Still flows past mountains, are they in his blood? 
Take these streams away, and the musical flood 
Shall flow past mountains that tower in his blood. 
For the fiddles squeak the chant ya-ho, 
And the Cherokees on the warpath go. 
I say this, think this, I may be deceived, 
'Tis easy to trust what we wish believed. 
41 



THE RAIL SPLITTERS AND THE CHEROKEE LOTOS 

Should the Great Father do what all surmise, 

Prove himself the Great Father of lies, 

The Nation's word, a tippler's oath, 

To see him whine and cringe I would be loath. 

He may be a poor dog, may be no higher, 

But he's under the whelp of a bulldog sire; 

And the under dog is my side of the fight, 

Besides with him is a mountain of right. 

He may be a beggar, but he's worthy my mite, 

And right under the red shows quite white. 

I have been his guest and host more free 

Ne'er have I seen in poverty. 

I have shared his simple fare, 

I have seen him put by, with kingly air, 

Reward for hospitality 

And this in pinching poverty. 



42 



THE MUSCOGEE IN MEXICO 

A Legend of the Conquest Told to the Wanderer 

Many, many moons ago, 

Many sleeps to the setting sun, 
In tending their corn and hunting their game, 

Muscogee Ulgha lived as one. 

Rippled and sang the waving corn, 

And the song that it sang was dear to each heart ; 
"Mine and thine" did not grate on the ear, 

Of the corn and the song each owned a part. 

The corn fields then were bigger than now, 

And the braves were brave and the squaws were true. 

And the squaws, and the braves, each did their part, 
They did not live as now we do. 

A rumor came creeping up slow from the West, 
Came slow gliding, snake-like and still, 

Of some wonderful beings with wonderful ways, 
Who could make them two or one at their will.* 

This wonderful something crept up and nearer, 
Quiet we stood like a snake-charmed bird, 

Even the great, brave king of the great, brave city 
Never lifted a finger, said never a word. 
43 



THE MUSCOGEE IN MEXICO 

"Quetzalcoatl" some said "was coming," 
The wonder-working child of the sun, 

They talked of the many wonderful things 
That the Great Sun God before had done. 

Then some one came who had seen this being, 

And said "As the sun, he was passing fair, 
And swift as the sun, for he walked four-footed* 

And the sun with his arrows had made him hair. 
And Montezuma had sent him offerings, 

Golden treasure and a golden sun, 
With a wish soft uttered, a prayer low spoken 

That the child of the sun would leave him alone. 

Then a message came, "He is in the city !" 

Tenochtitlan on the waters born, 
Waters that still seem moaning in pity, 

As the wind moans now through that weedy corn. 

That these wonderful guests be given a palace, 
The Great King yields his father's calls, 

Not yield, but gives, with kindly giving, 
Food and shelter within his walls. 

Then the king was seized. At this we wonder, 

For no ill thing the king had done, 
But then Malinche could never blunder, 

He must do right, he a child of the sun. 



* The Spanish Cavalry. 

44 



THE MUSCOGEE IN MEXICO 

Then word came they had bound the king, 
That they were fighting in Tenochtitlan, 

That they had killed some of his Teules, 
That Malinche himself was only a man. 

And some said "Nay for he owns the thunder,* 
And the lightning he holds in each hand's hollow, 

And he arms and equips with thunder bolts 
Each of his Teules that after him follow." 

But their god was naught but a cross of gold, 
At their god's feet they piled their dead; 

Killed to get gold for their golden god, 
The Eternal Sun was ours instead. 

And they said "These men were crazy for gold; 

They wished to make them other gods, 
We liked it forsooth, it shone like the sun, 

Else it had been the same as the clods." 

Then an owl flew over mournfully hooting. 
It said, "The Great Montezuma is dead." 
Killed by Malinche some thought it said, 

Or done by themselves for Malinche's uprooting. 

The king was good, and brave as good, 

All Anuhuac to him had bowed, 

And this is how his soul so proud 
Could bow himself to Malinche's mood. 

* Cannon. 

45 



THE MUSCOGEE IN MEXICO 

The prophets had again and again foretold 
That Quetzalcoatl twice should reign, 
Should come from the East with a flowing train, 

White-faced and bearded, blithesome and bold. 

And Malinche was Quetzal to him ever 

And he bowed to this, the gods had decreed. 
His eyes saw not Malinche's greed. 

The gods had spoken nor shrank he ever. 

The king feared the gods, and the Ulgha the king, 
And while he lived a hand none lifted 
Though quick to its fate our whole race drifted. 

'Twas the gods, not Malinche who did this thing. 

Else Malinche was a god after all, 

And to summon more Teules he left the city, 
And a god you know has nor mercy nor pity, 

Some Ulghas must rise and some must fall. 

Then heard we again that the brave Guautemozin 
A Warrior's welcome w«:s marching to give. 
To the coming Malinche, if the gods let him live. 

In place of Cuitlah he had been chosen. 

For a thousand Muscogees orders came. 

We went, a thousand, brave and strong hearted. 

Our young men then with strength had not parted. 
The Muscogee then was not as now tame. 
46 



THE MUSCOGEE IN MEXICO 

It was hardly a fight, 

'Twas a great Ulgha dying, 

With a strong hold on life, not quietly lying. 
The gods of each looked down on the sight. 

There stood Malinche's great cross of Gold, 
There our Teocalli with steps toward the sun. 
Oh, how swift upward and downward we run ! 

The smoke of their hearts goes up e'er 'tis cold. 

With sound majestic from the great sun tower 

The voice of our God, and his answer would come 
In the slow, rolling boom of the great round drum, 

That hushed e'en Malinche's thunder power. 

We heard the command, and each obeyed. 

The braves all moving as one man, 

Young Gautemozin leading the van. 
We heard their thunder, no more dismayed. 

But Malinche seemed still a child of the sun, 
And crowding around our old foes came, 
The tribes of the Tonqui, who eat men as game, 

Like carrion crows when the panther is done. 

When we had charged again and again, 

We all came to know the gods were our foes. 
It was then that the chief in his grief uprose, 

And said: "Would you see Muscogee, my men?" 
47 



THE MUSCOGEE IN MEXICO 

Then we all rose up in sudden haste. 

We hewed us a path through that circle of fire. 

We came to the home of our heart's desire. 
Alas for Muscogee! It was all laid waste. 

The sneaking Alabama thieves, 

That had stayed at home and would not go 
To Anuhuac's help 'gainst the murderous foe 

Had stolen all as the frost steals leaves. 

"Never will come," they told your braves. 

They are fated and doomed by the wrath of the gods, 

Aztec souls are no better than clods, 
Your sons and fathers are in their graves." 

As a wolf affrighted, gorging its prey, 
They started quick with a sneaking run, 
"We will go," say they, "to the child of the sun, 

To his home in the East, we dare not stay." 

Then our old men said, "Annhuae's gone, 
And some of our squaws and wigwams, too. 
There is nothing here for Muscogee to do 

But to follow the trail his foes walk on." 

We follow like panther chasing the deer, 

We were hungry for blood of this grass-hiding snake, 
Through land of palm, through dense canebrake, 

Our guide was revenge, and our way was clear. 
48 



THE MUSCOGEE IN MEXICO 

We follow on and down the river, 

The Father of Waters, the King of Floods, 
But, alas, our foes had crossed with their goods, 

And there was the stream that had flowed forever. 

But we go to work with a passionate will. 
We hew the heart from the cottonwood 
As the priest the heart from his victim could. 

Each blow on canoe means, "Kill, kill, kill." 

The trail it was dim, but revenge is quick sighted. 

We push on toward the sunrise sea. 

Than that no farther our foes can flee, 
And there Muscogee's wrongs will be righted. 

As a man overtaken by the thing that he fears, 
Our foes see clear the ghost that had haunted 
We see revenge for which our souls panted. 

From the tribe we take the coming years. 

We took from this tribe the years that came after. 
We left not squaw, not brave alive, 
Nor old man, nor pappoose to cry or strive, 

We made them a hissing and forever a laughter. 

This is the story that the old men hand, 

That the old men get from those who are older. 
And they tell how Muscogees were braver and bolder 

When they lived in the West by Tenochtitlan. 
49 



THE MUSCOGEE IN MEXICO 

For days, and for days, the wanderer was haunted 
By a form that took a clear outline, 
By a face that almost seemed divine, 

As the harsh-tinted years over it slanted. 

Corn fields untilled and gone to waste, 

Some squaws bare-legged and laid in the sun, 
A game of cards most lazily done, 

By Muscogee unbraves with civilized taste, 

The Aztec stream spread out to a pool, 
A swamp where miasma only breeds, 
A field of corn o'ergrown by weeds, 

By our race sown malicious and cool. 

The wanderer's dream, this did not break. 

That grief -bowed head would come between. 

A fated race was only seen. 
And this he did for his own quiet's sake. 



50 



A MASS FOR MONTEZUMA 

A mass I would say for a kingly soul, 

A sorrowful face looking down from the years, 
Montezuma the sad, not in anger but tears, 

As the unshrived centuries over him roll. 

A face that haunts wherever I go, 

Let me walk, let me move wherever I will, 
That same sad face will follow me still, 

"Is it justice, or vengeance disquiets thee so?" 

My pen is my sword, good old-time king. 

I kneel at thy feet, I obey they behest, 

I answer an unnamed, mute request. 
Each note is a stroke, in the song I sing. 

I strike at the wrong by the Spaniard done, 
At oblivion's dust the years have piled. 
Quixotic it may be, weak and wild, 

Call it all these, but my tilt I will run. 

O unhoused soul, that wandered so long, 
Unmassed and alone on purgatorial shore, 
Come out, come forth, thou shalt wander no more. 

My faith it is weak, thy strength it is strong. 
51 



A MASS FOR MONTEZUMA 

My faith it is weak, I saw thee go down 
In the dust before Spaniard grasping for gold. 
Go down in the wealth of thy worth untold, 

The meekest of all that ever wore crown. 

A fate more hard no king ever bore, 
A fate that was borne so lovingly meek, 
That Spanish Diaz perforce must speak 

And say "At his death we all wept sore." 

The clinking of gold was hushed and they wept, 
"We all wept seeing how good he was." 
This for weeping indeed were cause, 

The soul was awake that slumbered and slept. 

Yet, Cortes, for thee, even tears are vain, 
So deeply died is thy damned disgrace. 
Tears will not wash thy treachery's trace. 

Thy soul forever shall wear its stain. 

But I place these tears in Nemesis' hand. 
O cold and cruel, negligent years, 
Come, look through the lens of Cortes' tears. 

See ye not the form of a kingly man? 

A kingly man, no grander king, 
Ever made lustrous Homer's page, 
More pious than saint, far wiser than sage. 

Awe thrills the soul even while we sing. 
52 



A MASS FOR MONTEZUMA 

An oracle spake to this man divine. 

The doom of his race was shown to this soul. 

He saw oblivion's waters roll. 
A fate most sad, yet he did not repine. 

Abram offered his only son, 

He could offer himself, his name and his race, 
And look on it all with upturned face. 

And say, "Thy will, not mine, be done." 

'Twas sager than sage that he should do this, 
For you and I have seen it done, 
Have seen the red race to their sad doom run. 

Their lifting a finger hindered little I wis. 

The gods did it, that is all. 

Yet a cloud comes rising up slow from the West, 
A sigh will escape the right loving breast. 

Why should we rise, why should they fall? 

The sun-tilled land is an echoless void, 

Yet still, slow-rising, comes that ink-black "Why?" 
Sun, moon and stars are shut from faith's eye. 

Day turns to night, and trust is destroyed. 

But Nemesis lives and there somewhere is sun, 

And Spain is rent by fratricide war. 

Our land crushed 'neath gold's Juggernaut car 
Needs no prophet to say, "Thy race is soon run." 
53 



A MASS FOR MONTEZUMA 

Three hundred years have been years of strife, 
The strife of thieves over ill-gotten gains, 
The strife of boys who should hold the reins. 

You may read as you run each nation's life. 

Mexico land, lifted up to the sun, 

The dwindling years grow sick at the sight ! 
O land of day, that thy sons turn to night, 
Darkened and dimmed by foul deeds done! 

Land of the free, Utopian land, 

A house, bad built, on shifting sand, 
The shifting sand of fraud and force, 

Know ye not that Nemesis still rides on his course? 

A century rocked, a cradled land, 

That century saw a proud youth stand, 

Then saw him leap quick to a full-grown man, 

Lived to see him bleed with suicide hand. 

Mexico, Peru, America all, 

Ye may hoard your gains, multiply increase, 
But ye shall not go to your graves in peace. 

Ye are fated and doomed by the Red Man's fall. 

1 said I have espoused the weak. 

Their wrongs, perforce, have made me speak. 
Each stroke of my pen is a Knight's sword stroke. 
I gave myself praise and so fearlessly spoke. 
54 



A MASS FOR MONTEZUMA 

I look again, in each line I trace 

Of the life and the death of this sad doomed race, 

The thread of my own is interwoven; 

Their doom is mine, our fates uncloven. 

I have carried an Indian in my soul, 
Nature in me that spurned control 
Of the lying life they call civilized, 
The fox in a man, perforce, I despised. 

I could not wear their civilized coat, 
And so I fled Westward and wandering wrote. 
For the dying Red race there is no room, 
And I live a life that voices their doom. 



55 



AMONG THE SEMINOLES 

In the days when Muscogees were lords, one and all, 
From the Blue Ridge Peaks to the great Gulf Sea, 
From the North to the South their deer ran free. 

Their manor and park were those forests so tall. 

These young lords said, "A-hunting we go, 
We will go up there to those smoky hills." 
So they went and followed their own wild wills, 

No game law was there to say to them no. 

They did not wantonly slaughter their deer, 
Nor kill for the hides as men hunting for gain. 
This sport was their school, and inured to pain, 

The youth to a warrior stepped without fear. 

They went up gaily toward Blue Ridge Peaks, 

Went in their Indian Summer time. 

Their feet move bold in a bounding rhyme, 
Life unchecked in each foot speaks. 

Their bows they twang 'mong herds of deer, 
And they met up there some mild Uechees, 
And they smoke the calumet under the trees, 

Feasting their guests with lordly cheer. 

56 



AMONG THE SEMINOLES 

One told of the ways in the land of the West, 
And the other of the ways they lived in the East, 
As they sat and smoked after venison feast, 

Fashioning the fashion which some call best. 

To Muscogee host said the Uechee guest, 
"Come go see us over there in our town, 
There where that hill to that valley slopes down, 

We will feast you well, we will give you our best." 

So the Muscogees went to the Uechee town. 

The dogs they barked, and the squaws ran about, 
And the old men jabbered a merry rout. 

On well-spread skins their guests sat them down. 

And the Uechee maidens bubbled over with glee, 
They never had seen braves half so tall. 
The Uechees nodded nor were jealous at all, 

And love ran smooth to a wide smooth sea. 

And this was the wisdom of their old wise men — 
For the truly wise can counsel in love — 
"Is it wise to sneer at a cooing dove? 

Or the old, old story told new again?" 

A stream from the setting sun came flowing, 
Came through the mountain and over the plain, 
Came fed by the foodful falling rain. 

It fed as it ran, as it came it was growing. 

57 • 



AMONG THE SEMINOLES 

"It grew wide, over its banks it spread. 

It swept away towns, swam over their dead. 

It met a stream to the southward flowing, 

That down to the sea seemed leisurely going, 

A channel that still had room for growing, 

A channel that for each of the rivers seemed wide. 

So they met and embraced in a mingling tide, 

And they talked as they ran to the white sea side. 

So we see not why this Muscogee river, 
To Uechee stream should not be a giver. 
Your banks o'er full are your own streams stain, 
You can give with the strength of the falling rain, 
You can give, and giving shall be your gain, 
That the fountain of life may flow on ever." 
This seemed wisdom to the Muscogees, 
So they took them wives of the mild Uechees. 

Then said the Muscogees, "To our homes we will go, 
Though the days dance, whirling, spinning around, 
Though you feast us brave in your Uechee town, 

Our brides to the tribe and chiefs we must show." 

And a rare old tour had this centifold wedding. 

The stars looked down with their eyes of gold. 
The boughs of birch at night were their bedding, 

And they walked in the sun like coursers bold. 

5S 



AMONG THE SEMINOLES 

They had little need of the iron horse, 

They had little need of the cushioned carriage, 

There was iron enough in their free veins course, 

Love cushioned and paved for this primal marriage. 

But gossip is swifter than wedding feet, 
And she bare the news to the Muscogees, 
She flew full swift on the wings of the breeze 

And alighted her down in the busiest street. 

There was raising of heads and lifting of brows, 
And the old men said "Did you ever?" 
And the old women said, "No, I never !" 
Or this was the sum of their long pow-wows. 
They called a council of the old men and sages 
To see if 'twas written by tradition's scribe 
That Muscogee dare wed from out of his tribe. 
They found, after turning memory's pages, 
That this had not happened in by-gone ages. 
So 'twas settled, agreed, and the law was laid down, 
That these Muscog-Uechees should not come in their town. 

A messenger met them chatting gaily in glee, 
Muscogee grooms to brides Uechee. 
And a funeral dirge was that wedding march, 
And grave and sad were eyes late arch, 
For the winter was coming, he stepped just behind, 
You could feel his breath in the mountain wind. 

59 



AMONG THE SEMINOLES 

They had quit their hunt for the Uechee town, 
Do you wonder then that the braves looked down, 
Looked down on the ground, looked round 'mong the trees. 
Looked this way and that, but not in eyes of Uechees. 

Then spake the chief's bride, thoughtful and slow, 
"When you told of your ways a few sleeps ago 
Spake you not of a dance when the maize comes in? 
(If this love is all wrong, if this wedding is sin), 
At this dance you begin life again, begin it anew. 
The New Year is a new chance, a chance to be true, 
The past is burned up, old grudges and all 
Disappear with the dirt heap that tumble and fall 
In the flames that leap up, that leap to devour. 
Old corn and utensils are gone in an hour. 
Will not hate for us, the stranger Uechees, 
Depart like the ashes that are borne on the breeze. 
We can watch out here till the good time comes, 
Wait till that opens the door of your homes." 

Each brave stood mute and none said bold, 
Though it was not thus with the squaws of old. 
She was moved to speak and so maidenly spoke 
That the oldest fogy forgot to croak. 

The chief looked proud in the timid eyes, 
Proud with the pride of a glad surprise, 
But his eyes fell again as a chill wind blew, 
And famine uprose, clad in wintery hue. 

60 



AMONG THE SEMINOLES 

He looked to the North, he turned to the South, 

There are fruits down there that tempt the mouth, 

Orange and palm under suns of gold, 

Like the home in the West this strange men told. 

Better and braver a home of our own, 

Than to hang around here with sorrowful moan. 

Then they all rose up, proud and strong, 

And set their eyes Southward, soul full of song, 

Full of hope, full of strength as ever men are, 

When they build them a home in the vague somewhere. 

They call themselves bravely, "Seminole," — 

A stranger, a wanderer, a refugee. 

"Seminole," Muscogees say 

Of a horse or cow that has wandered away. 

They wandered long, these Seminoles, 

Till they made them a home by the Southern Seas. 

Wild and strong they who wander in youth, 

Israel's history is Nature's truth. 

Of these Seminoles their strength and pride, 
You will find some pages in our history 

Which are writ with our races' crimson tide, 
And these explain what else were mystery. 

'Tis as clear as the sun, he that runneth may read, 

From the Uechee cross sprang a noble breed, 

61 



AMONG THE SEMINOLES 

A race that honored the Indian name, 

A race that could teach us how to die game, 

To die in, not talk of, the vaunted last ditch, 
A courage healthful, strong and sound, 

A courage rare, of exalted pitch. 
That ditch it took much treasure to fill, 

For year after year they held at bay 

Jackson's army in a wonderful way, 
Old Hickory Jack, with his resolute will. 

Historians call it the Nation's disgrace, 

This stubborn courage in Seminole. 

We should have honored them by leaving them free. 

The Everglades ever sacred should be. 
The Seminoles' home, for courage a place. 

But courage and virtue have never a home, 
Exiled are they from the land of the free. 
Perchance they may dwell with you and me, 

But, tainted with virtue, we are forced to roam. 

To roam as roamed these Seminoles, 

Away from their home by the Southern Seas, 
To roam as Byron, or Dante roamed, 
To roam as the wanderer, houseless, unhomed, 

To hunt from the west to the east for a home, 
For a place to live, for a place to be free, 
To do and to live as it seemed to be 

Best, seek and not find, then life's desert roam. 

62 



AMONG THE SEMINOLES 

Or perforce you shall herd with little men, 
Be cramped and choked in their narrow ways, 
Eat bitter bread till you wish your days 

To be thrown by death, not to rise again. 

So he felt a kinship with these Seminoles, 
As he ate their rice in this rigider clime, 
Thinking of Florida all the time, 

The native land of Muscog-Uechees. 



The Washita winds 
In a wild sweet way, 
Down through that vale, 
Where the rank grass teems. 
Like wind-blown scarf, 
It gracefully seems, 
Cottonwood fringed, 
O reddest of streams, 
You wind in my dreams 
In a wonderful way ! 



63 



AMONG THE WICHITAS 

Some Wichitas lodges sleep in the sun, 

With their inmates asleep, in the high noontide, 

Save some now and then who leisurely ride 

To and fro from those houses on that steep hillside, 

Houses down there where the white washing's done. 

Where the red is smeared with a coat of white, 
A Procrustean bed where men are lopped. 

If God did not make them to fit just right 

The White's down bed, straight off they are chopped. 

That house down there is a school of the Friends, 
Alas that the word should only mean, 
"Friend, if you follow my path" I ween, 

If not, then and there the friendship ends. 

It was not thus in the days of Penn, 

Penn the deep seeing, Penn the great souled, 

For whom the curtains of night were upward rolled, 

That he might see truth in the hearts of men. 

Pagan and Christian were alike to thee, 

If truth had touched and tendered their hearts, 
Man dealt with man void of wiles or arts, 

A Friend thou wert in sincerity. 
64 



AMONG THE VflCHITAS 

"I call you not children, parents chide. 

I call you not brothers, brothers strife divide 

The bond between us is not a chain, 

For that the rain might rust and stain, 

The falling tree might break in twain. 

We are parcel and part of the self-same whole, 

We are twain yet one in mind and soul, 

We are twain yet one in flesh and blood, 

What to thee seems good, that to me seems good. 

That, that seemeth true to thee, 

The same is ever true to me." 

The chief looked level in the Great Penn's eyes, 
And he saw only truth, not treacherous lies. 
"As long as the sun and moon shall live, 
Love to you and yours I give." 
The belt and wampun he gives to Penn, 
And the sign and symbol go back again. 

Truth was the sea they sailed between 
And few are the storms on that sea I ween. 

Penn did not wish him to wear his hat. 

But we do not read he seized hold of his throat 
And tried to force him into his Quaker coat. 

Look awhile on this picture and then on that. 

65 



AMONG THE WICHITAS 

Some children drilled in the ABC 

Of a language as far as Coptic from thee, 

Some Wichitas waiting for their weekly dole 

Of beggar's bread that binds the soul, 

Genius waiting at my lord duke's table, 

Once proud and strong, now hardly able 

To natter and fawn on the hand that feeds, 

Thus have been sown corruption's seeds, 

Wichitas and Wacos, so lazily lying, 

This, not "fire water," is the cause of your dying. 

As a man in haste that dare not stay, 

As we shuddering turn from the putrid dead, 
From a sight that sickens, nor turn the head, 

So the wanderer rose and hasted away. 

He said, "I will see the Comanche ride, 
Arapahoe, Apache and Kiowa, 
Whose fierce wild wills are their only law, 
Whose blood runs bold in a bounding stream, 
I will see if they, too, are a vanishing dream, 
A vanishing dream, a thing of the past, 
Sick Nature's dream that can not last." 



O she wolf, O foster mother — 
Our rough and rugged frontier. 
The youth of the nation fed here, 

Strength that routine could not smother. 
66 



AMONG THE WICHITAS 

We looked to thee for a saviour 

To come as did the Judean, 

Or to cleanse our stables Augean, 
Of heroic Herculean behavior. 

But they spurn the she wolf's teat out there, 
Government pap is now their care, 
And the Nation is now drifting, God knows where, 
And the best and the bravest can only despair. 



67 



AMONG THE BLANKET INDIANS 

Forts burlesque, yes forts in play, 

Are these posts we pitch in our West frontier. 

Fortifying themselves and costing us dear, 
They pass their time in a peaceable way. 

Poetaster Columbia writes bad satires 
On all she sees in the old East world. 
At the Chinaman's wall these forts are hurled, 

A hobbling rhyme is this chain of fires. 

But, alas, the chain has missing links, 

And Comanche and Kiowa ride in and out 
And Mexico slips with her rabble and rout, 

Through this satire on walls, this wall all chinks. 

The cream of the cream of civilized life 
Is society here of the grand militaire. 
'Tis just the same as the thing out there, 

Milk skimmed twice for the name cream in strife, 

Which turns it to clabber sad and sour, 
With a vapid, weak and watery taste, 
Fit food for swine, the kitchen's waste 

Of niggard nature, who turns all to power. 
68 



AMONG THE BLANKET INDIANS 

Thus the swinish Hun devoured old Rome. 
He swilled her up as a pig swills whey, 
Or anything rotten that has had its day, 

Luxurious Rome, creme de la creme's home. 

Paradoxical nature jests with a frown. 

When nations are richest in houses and lands, 
In art and science, the work of men's hands, 

Up starts a nude savage and laughs it all down. 

A lesson the years have taught in vain, 

That courage and virtue are the only wealth, 
That a lack of virtue is a lack of health, 

Man cons this lesson again and again. 

This lesson once gotten the world would advance 
And not spin round as a top that spins, 
Whose spotted sides are spotted with sins. 

The same and the same is the world top's dance. 

Same one-story cottages built of stone, 

On a lawn buffalo once trimmed with care, 
Have formed themselves in a hollow square. 

Round a flag like a leader standing alone. 

Away to the West tumbled up you may see, 
Yes, tossed and tumbled as if in sport, 
A rebuke to the soulless routine of the fort, 

The Wichita mountains sublime in their glee. 
69 



AMONG THE BLANKET INDIANS 

Shoulder-straps with his bars and stars, 

In one of those forts is the most that you scan, 
Captains, Majors, Generals, but never a man. 

The man is cashiered, in his stead stars and bars. 

How it is I can not tell, 

But demoralized since the late civil war, 
Denuded of virtue is each bar and star. 

Then to hide behind rank perhaps it is well. 

For morals and virtue are the soul's only clothes. 

Naked as Adam without them we are. 

God calls, and lo the man is not there. 
Where he has hid, God only knows.' 

"To talk to all men without fear or reserve, 

This to me philosophy has taught," 

Says rugged Montaigne. This is virtue, is it not? 
This man facing man shows the true moral nerve. 

And he opened wide his castle gate 

When his land was noisy with civil broils, 
When guarded castles were robber's spoils. 

Watch and ward on the true man wait. 

To please him and pledge him to their side 
The British, the proud Tecumseh clad, 
In a general's pomp they would make him glad — 

He looked, then he laid them all aside. 



70 



AMONG THE BLANKET INDIANS 

He was clothed upon — you may turn to Paul — 
With virtue's own immortal clothes, 
This act in itself most plainly shows, 

Nor needed their trappings, nor rank, at all. 

One of my friends, a farmer youth, 

Barefooted, in rags, knees out at their ends, 
Just fresh from the plow, was shown by some 
friends 

To a room full of snobs, as he was, all uncouth. 

He said, not stammered, nor hid knees with hands, 
"The identical man is under these rags." 
This he nicknamed to me as one of his "brags." 

Then he sat and looked as his subsoiled lands 
Had taught him to look from cushioned sod, 
Turning fearless eyes to the skies and to God. 

On his farm, rising up eighty feet in the air 
Is a mound, they say it was built by Shawnees, 
The identical man, he is in both of these, 

Tecumseh, and he. How traveled he there? 

"They sewed them fig leaves," the old story goes. 

Guilt in its utter nakedness, 

Guilt has ever taken to dress, 
Abuse has ever hid under clothes. 

You may take a barouche for Central Park, 
Or stroll if you please adown Broadway, 
On the afternoon of any day, 

If you wish some notes on that passage dark. 

71 



AMONG THE BLANKET INDIANS 

Dress and dress and overdress, 

Your Demi-monde is fashion's queen. 

Yet with billowed flounce and frill, I ween, 

The modern fig leaf they confess. 

Or drift with the wanderer out on the plains, 
Stand on Fort Sill on some ration day, 
See the dandy Comanche in the very same way 

Attempting the man without courage or brains. 

This dandy Comanche is never a brave. 

He excuses himself with feathers and paint, 
Much like the nineteenth century saint. 

God asked a man, prayers he gave. 

Dressed, addressed and overdressed, 

We seem to have drifted leagues away. 
But come with me back to this ration day 

You shall see in the least I have not digressed. 

A flash, a glitter of arms, 

A shake, a clatter of hoofs, 

Centaurs exist, lo, the proofs, 
Comanche is horse and man. 

A thousand mounted men, 

Five hundred woman astride, 

Not stuck on a horse's side, 
Much like a wart or wen. 

72 



AMONG THE BLANKET INDIANS 

Arms, bow and quiver, 

Spear and Spencer, too, 

With these arms what might they do? 
From the scalp these runs a shiver. 

Here dangle a grizzly's paws, 
The tail of the wolf that sneaks, 
The hide of the panther that shrieks, 

Clasped by an eagle's claws. 

See on that squaw dismounted, 

A cloak with elk's teeth showered. 
With those pearls she is richly dowered, 

Five hundred on her cloak I counted. 

And two at a mule are reckoned. 

Two hundred and fifty mules to wear, 
And then the sweep of her midnight hair 

And eyes that your soul outbeckoned. 

Topin, her name means woman, 

Some horses were traced to her father's band, 
Horses or blood is the Texan's demand. 

She gave ten, the human. 

From this humane, womanly savage, 
Turn to their chiefs of renown 
As they rollicking ride up and down 

These raiders our frontier's ravage. 
73 



AMONG THE BLANKET INDIANS 

There's Lone Wolf that looks so lonely 
That his badge, a single wolf's tail, 
Seems to keep time to a wail, 

"I bereft am Lone Wolf the only." 

And he who so carelessly rides, 

With the quiver of grey wolf's skin, 
Three tails flapping under his chin, 

Is Grey Wolf whom no fear betides. 

There galloping, roystering past, 
With so frank and open a face, — ■ 
Is his eagle's plume out of place? 

That is Dangerous Eagle, that last. 

And there yon is Woman's Heart, 
Womanly only in wiles, 
If one can judge by his smiles, 

And fit for stratagem's part. 

That is Big Bow, a Cyclops in strength, 
A strength without motive or will 
Strong, but his face says "Kill," 

Insignia — a bow of great length. 

Those unarmed braves over there 
So meek and pious they look 
They might fit a Sunday school book, 

Yet they ride on a raid anywhere. 



AMONG THE ELANKET INDIANS 

A pageant glittering, grand 

As dreams of an Eastern show, 
Yet piteous, full of woe, 

Comanche, with beggar's hand. 

To beg of the Saxon, too, 

With his foot on the neck of your race, 
With his snobbish, lordly grace, 

Who sneers at all that you do. 

Then down with his beggar's crust, 
With his rattles to please a child, 
Back to your Wichitas wild, 

You have Spencers, why let them rust? 

Back or be pushed on to the sea 
To sink in oblivion's waves, 
Or rot in your beggar's graves. 

Ye once were proud and free. 

Says a white-shirted Kiowa chief, 
Who follows the white man's road, 
Who bows with his beggar's load, 

Indian renegrade in brief, 

"Me keep from the mountain air, 

They be medicine bad. 

Young men get restless and mad, 
Steal ponies, send Whites down there." 

75 



AMONG THE BLANKET INDIANS 

Aye, keep from the mountain air, 
Cringingly wait in the dust, 
Lie at his feet for your crust, 

Be fed by your conqueror's care. 

But why should I upbraid 

A race once artless free, 

But now by you and me 
Corrupt, debauched, betrayed. 

And Christians are you and I, 
Heathen, savages are they, 
Will it stand so on Judgment day? 

We are savages, perchance in God's eye. 

And nations have judgment days 
And justice books account, 
Aye, knows to a jot the amount. 

Some debts blood only pays. 



76 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

Because the harness my shoulders is galling 

That I hate the world and the world hates me, 

Not that it knows me or that it cares to 

But simply that I have known the world, 

And, knowing its customs, its habits, its manners, 

Know that we twain can never agree, — 

So not being burdened with goods and with chattels, 

(Of goods and of chattels, thank God I am free!) 

I shall pick myself up and take myself out of it, 

Take myself out of its noise and its hub-bub, 

Its voting, its shopping, its praying, its fighting, 

For to sum it up all, it is buying and selling. 

Its buying and selling is legitimized stealing. 

Its legitimized stealing is for eating and drinking. 

I thought of the law, of its suits and its jargon. 
I will stand for defense for men tried for their lives, 
The friend of the widow, the friend of the orphan, 
A man that is honest, one that is upright. 
One that for right and for truth ever strives, 
And then the law should be only a stepstone 
To a grander, loftier, kinglier sphere. 
I would lift myself up, I would lift myself out of it. 
77 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

I would grow to a statesman, a member of Congress, 

Of Clay or of Webster I would be the peer, 

But I saw that this lawing was dignified lying. 

The dust of thy calling shall cling to thee ever. 

Twixt justice and feeling can any man sever ? 

And what is a statesman but a man of fox cunning, 

Who with the speed of the fox after office is running? 

By buying and selling a Congress is made, 

So I turned myself round, I walked away from it, 

Or rather the God that was in me born, 

For as to myself, not mine is the merit 

That meanness and baseness perforce I must scorn. 

I turned to the church, I got me religion, 
This my getting after three days of seeking. 
Got it by saying that my hands were reeking, 
Reeking as Pilate's with the blood of the lamb. 
Then I said to myself I will preach this religion. 
If the thing is of God it will lead men to goodness. 
"Not so fast," said the doctors, 
"First with us you must study the Fathers" 
If this is religion, it will grow with the giving 
A thing, if my life must I study by living. 
But said they again, "You must study the Fathers 
A true son of the church these devil doubts smothers," 
Then for a year I thirsted and hungered, 
Trying to feed on the husks that they offered, 
78 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

Husks whose rattling on my soul's ears were grating 

Husks not fit for a swine's stomach's sating, 

Manna gathered and left till the morning, 

Manna left over that bred worms and stank. 

Once the God in me rose up and told them, 

"Though your walls be beautied with ivy, 

Softened and mellowed by the moss of the ages, 

Yet if from them you do not send men out, 

Men God-equipped, forth into the battle, 

Sweetest of music are blows iconoclastic 

Battering and beating your walls to the ground." 

After a while they gave a vacation 
From clerical grinding. Four months of cessation 
They gave to us students for relaxation. 
As for myself, I was still bent on preaching, 
Bent on doing what I could in reaching, 
Reaching the heart of my fellow-men. 
So I went forth to preach my religion, 
That that I thought would help men in living, 
"Such as I have" this was my giving. 
"Such as we wish, this must you preach to us. 
Bread that we like, this must you reach to us, 
Elders and deacons thus laid down the law to me, 
After this fashion thus parrotcaw to me. 
Conscience is Godlike and will not be schooled, 
Young blood is hot and will not be ruled, 
79 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

So I rowed and I rode and I flirted. 
The deacons they prayed, they sputtered and spurted, 
I rowed, poled, paddled birch bark batteau, 
Daring the deacons to say to me, "No." 
I rode, ran, racked mare, gelding and stallion, 
Just to hear the deacons call me rapscallion. 
I fooled, flirted, flattered maid, wife, mother 
That old woman gossip might have something to smother. 
All this I did to show them I could 
Preach and live as I pleased, and not as they would. 
Not very grand, very noble was this, 
But 'twas better than preaching their lives, I wis. 
Just then a Soul, eager and earnest, 
Earnestly looking after the Truth, 
Eagerly watching, unfolding her youth — 
Touched me, and waked the God that had slumbered, 
Then said, "Frivolous days ye are numbered." 
So I betook me again to their grinding, 
Hoping the truth would be for my finding. 
Staler than ever seemed the bread that they offered, 
Two-thousand-year-old manna they proffered. 
I heard of a place where they lay in green pastures, 
Heard of a place where they fed by the waters, 
Where ministers grew as grows the oak shade, 
So I carried me off from the noise of their grinding, 
Warnings, threatenings, little minding, 
Minding only the God in my soul. 
80 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

Well for a while the horizon seemed wider. 

Sun and moon for a while seemed brighter. 

Gone seemed the whirring, the noise of the mill. 

Then I found they, too, had shibboleth 

"Soft," said I, "Still the mill wheel rolleth." 

"The Christian religion this must you preach." 

For "the" read "their" and the truth you will reach. 

Wheels were well oiled, but wheels they were still, — 

'Twas a Unitarian minister mill. 

But I ground on till the year was ended. 

Then I went forth a minister mended, 

Doctored by doctors with heterodox doctrine. 

A heretic was that church's own child. 

Well I preached the Truth as I saw it, 

Preached the Life up to where I had lived it, 

Showed the Way as far as I had walked in it. 

"Ah," said the church, "This is not Bible preaching, 
This is preaching yourself, it is not Jesus teaching." 
Oh fools and dotards and sluggards in seeing, 
Ye can not discern twixt seeming and being. 
Out of the Heart the Bible was writ. 
The five books of Moses are the Jews wanderings, 
Judges, Chronicles, Kings are the Jews history, 
The Sphinx book of Job questions Life's mystery, 
The Psalms are moods of men of the Soul. 
Hate, remorse, joy, sorrow tumultuously roll. 
81 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

The Proverbs are sayings of men of experience. 

Throw the plummet of Life, are they at variance? 

Ecclesiastes has gnawed the sweet to the bitter, 

Vanity of vanities, I manhood did fritter. 

Solomon's Song is the language of passion, — 

Love was fiercer than now is the fashion. 

The Prophets wail forth from the heart of God 

To woo men to Nature and lift from the sod. 

Then Jesus steps forth and speaks from the Life, 

His Life, twixt Life and dead forms there ever is strife. 

With a gulp down my throat walked I away from them, 

Walked I away in pity and sorrow, 

Setting my face toward the God of the mountain, 

Turning my steps toward old Katahdin. 

Unrest sought rest, restful it loomed 

Neither took I guide book or companion. 

I had business with God alone. 

Well, in a way I had not thought of — 

When were God's ways those that of men not of? 

Schooled was I in the school of the mountain, 

Quenched was my thirst from Life, Nature's fountain. 

Then I took me away to the Southland. 
I found him for manhood groping, 
Feeling the darkness yet blindly hoping, 
Hoping that something somehow would be done. 
Demagogue duped, yet dupers pursuing. 
Found I the Freedman, the government's child. 
82 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

Should I float with the tide that set to the ocean 

That pool of corruption of bribes and pollution 

That never is stirred by the breezes of God? 

As far as I could I would stem the current 

Of the tide of hate and the lust of power 

That burns and blights as it sweeps through the land. 

So for a while I toiled and struggled, 

Tugging away at the fetters of darkness, 

Trying to force again to their channels 

The lust of gold and the lust of power, 

The tide that had swollen the river of hate. 

"If you teach here among us you must be of us, 

The gospel of hate this must you preach." 

Thus said they, upheld by the arms of the Nation. 

Might is swifter than the truth's demonstration. 

Then I said, "I will write the thing as I see it. 

The North does not know this knowledge shall free it." 

Then wrote I as things existed, 

The Truth was not stretched, distorted or twisted, 

The South sat for her picture, I as best I could took it. 

Justice owed her debts, I, her scribe, book it. 

Broodingly, soul fully I worked at my plan 
Till I finished the drama of "Ku Klux Klan." 
Then a hasty good-by to a state trod down 
And I set my face northward, New York bound. 
O printers, O makers of tons of verse, 
Lackadaisical, whimsical or damnably worse, 
S3 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

Ballad mongers who bow to wealth, 

Poets who wait by the sea for your health, 

Hangers on the skirts of fashion, 

Souls white-blooded, feigning passion, 

Panderers to that where Society 

Swine of swill can have satiety, 

Poets big and poets small, 

Here in the woods I arraign ye all 

Tho' thou earnest with kid-gloved hands, 

Reaching a farce to the learned savants, 

Telling them how Addie Delain 

Went to a rout not home again, 

Harvard had need of something better, 

Boston was dying, killed by the letter, 

Back till your mountains shall give you vigor 

Leave them the clog dance, the clown and the Nigger, 

Back till your rivers shall course in your veins, 

Back till the gods shall give you the reins, 

Then come with Love and come with Life 

And thy song shall hush their wordy strife. 

And, Sire, thou with the silver hair, 
Poet who robbed our youth of care, 
Remember that down life's steep decline 
Those jades are coy, the Muses nine. 
And Sire, was it just the thing 
To give to Thor thy youth, thy spring? 
84 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

Then, come to Christ with the frosts of age, 

This hast thou done on thy stilted page. 

I read o'er and o'er thy tragedy. 

Christ, His Life's less tragic than before. 

Poet at the breakfast table, 

Always there thou should be able 

To feed our souls on stronger diet 

Than hash that's fit for maggots riot. 

Once the gods admitted thee 

To their lordly company. 

Since then thou'st blabbed about it, 

Told us how to in and out it, 

Told us of the heavenly fare, 

Talked to make the groundlays stare. 

Doctor, take dissecting knife, 

Dissect the dead, leave us the Life. 

Thou whose Muses once were witches, 
Now three dames, chart, shears and stitches, 
If now thy muse has turned dressmaker 
May next the change be undertaker 
To bury "form" from out of sight, 
Then Russell Lowell will be right. 

Thou thinkst and talkst too much of form 
To ever take the world by storm. 
Thy thoughts come to us, dandies strutting 
In coats of latest Broadway cutting, 
85 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

I'd rather hear them swear and swagger 
Or like Joaquin's look a dagger, 
Brave Joaquin that sailed the seas 
Because they were not clad like these. 
But then they are stamped across the water, 
They go like hot cakes, 'tis right, they're hotter. 
But is it right Europe-aping 
That ye should stand forever gaping, 
Leaning for the whispered word, 
The shot that round the world is heard. 
Why not fire it once and a while, 
Art young and free then make the style, 
Art young but free is name and sound 
Ye are veriest slaves that walk God's ground, 
Slaves of custom, slaves of gold, 
Bonds slaves are ye bought and sold. 
What will the world say and the fashion? 
Slaves to all and a little of passion. 
"What will the world say" is a hard master. 
Ye look over your shoulder, then dig the faster, 
Whittier — John, with the camel's hair, 
Right and Truth are thy only care. 
Yet One after is coming, 

Before thee he is — not with trumpets and drumming. 
Your souls are fanned by white-winged peace. 
Thou shalt wane, he must increase. 
Mine be Peter's flaming sword 
To smite the ear that waits the priest's word. 
86 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

Follower then am I of Ralph, 

He who follows is a man less a half. 

I follow as far as he walks my road, 

I go with him while he lightens my load, 

Than go on Life's path alone 

Lead it through frigid or torrid zone. 

What's the use of this mad endeavor, 
Cheap words go to hell where they burn forever, 
Along with the words of all the triflers, 
Would be scientists, God's world's riflers, 
Prowling the world for the strange and the rare, 
Something to make the book stalls stare, 
For, as the writers make just two classes, 
The dolts, the wise, the sages and asses. 
So the Critic the years as their pages turn 
Finds thoughts that breathe and words that burn, 
Thoughts that breathe not, words that are burned, 
These last into hell are turned. 
The first are the fire by which they are burned, 
Witness this in Don Quixote. 
Turn to his final ipse dixit. 
There on its spit rack hanging still 
Is Cervantes slender quill. 
Gone, those old stones stretching for miles, 
Spanish romances towering in piles. 
Burned, consumed in unquenchable fire, 
A pen, a flame, a fierce desire, 
87 



KATAHDIN-WARD 

That ever is leaping up fiercer and higher. 

Homer, Plato, Dante, have the fire eternal, 

That fire is love, lofty, supernal. 

Then Shakespeare flames forth in song undying, 

Scorching, consuming in its death defying. 

I was saying this or something like this 

One evening up here to a school ma'am miss, 

I said, I can count on my left hand fingers 

All who have lived of the world's great singers. 

I had got to Shakespeare, that sweet swan-singer, 

When she broke in, what ails your finger? 

A pithy period was spoilt by a scar. 

As it is up here so it is out there, 

And here setting out on its uttermost rim, 

After drinking the world cup when 'twas filled to the 

brim, 
After looking it up and looking it down, 
After turning it over and looking it round, 
A slice of the world is a piece of the world, 
Outside, inside, anywhere hurled. 
If you love the real, if you hate the shame, 
If you dare to say, "I am what I am," 
You shall go barefoot, shall walk alone, 
Your food the meat of a meatless bone, 
Shall clothe yourself with cast-off dresses, 
Shall bare your cheek to the wind's cold caresses. 
So I've said to myself, "I will mate with Katahdin, 
I will preach to the forest. 

'Tis better than doing the deed Thou abhorrest." 
SS 



THE MINISTER MILL 

The mills of the gods grind slowly, 
Yet they grind exceedingly fine, 

But this with its grist Theologic 
Was a mill of another kind. 

Forgive this pagan allusion, 

O Mill with the sacred grist, 
That I have named you among the heathen, 

And on the uncircumcised list. 

That the grist dared say to the grinder, 

"Wherefore doeth thou so?" 
That the wheat dared sing to the millstone 

The way it ought to go. 

Ask you, O mill, who dareth 

Thus to tread on holy ground? 
Who for burrs so little careth 

As they run in ancient round. 

He is one who has heard thy whirring 
For its whirr that all mills will 

And he knows whereof he affirmeth, 
For he's been through the Mill. 
89 



THE MINISTER MILL 

In just three years, to the very day, 

One goes through the mill in the orthodox way, 

And comes out a minister clerically gay, 

A minister with a white cravat, 

A minister with a beaver hat, 

A man with a roll of sermons. 

Men of all sorts go into this hopper 

And come out ministers decent and proper. 



90 



TO MY WIFE 

These tardy sheaves, this garnered grain, 

Unplucked by wayside long had lain. 

Into this field from fallow lands 

You came, rubbed heads in hands ; 

You lightly blew the chaff away. 

"Why, this is wheat !" I heard you say. 

"The world is full of chaff and cheat; 

Here ! See, this is honest wheat ! 

There's hunger in the world to feed, 

While this stands here like noxious weed." 

You thrust in sickle, gathered, gleaned, 

Gave chaff to winds ; the wheat was cleaned. 

You found my life all sore bested, 

This wayside field unharvested. 

As Boaz unto Ruth, I wis, 

What can I say but simply this : 

"These sheaves gleaned from the wayside field, 

This tardy harvest's garnered yield, 

Is yours, not mine, — yea, and my life 

Is yours, my leal and loving wife." 



91 



TO H. H. R. 

(On Receipt of Some Roses Sent During an Illness) 

Shall I write you what your roses are telling? 
There is more in the world than buying and selling, 
There is more in the world than greed and gain, 
There is more in the world than grief and pain. 

They tell of a world brim full of beauty, 

Of love that sweetens the homliest duty 

That comes to me in my sore affliction, 

A stay, a solace, a benediction : 

Of love that passes the love of woman, 

Of man to man, big hearted and human, 

Yes, this is what your roses are telling, 

In a world we thought all buying and selling. 



92 



A GOOD-BY QUAFF 

I have packed my traps, 

I have wrapped myself round me ; 
If the world does not love, 

It leaves as it found me. 

If friends fell off 

As leaves fall in autum, 
They only did 

What the frost devil taught 'em. 

If you stood firm 

When the wind roared loudly, 
I can only say 

You did it proudly. 

I toss this off 

As we drink the wine flowing. 
A health to Humphrey; 

I drink it going. 



93 



TO MY BROTHER 

Well, Neal, three years grinding, 

And never a minister yet; 
Tell mother not to worry, 

Tell her not to fret. 

For though her boy in a pulpit 

May never wag his head, 
She may take to herself much comfort 

From the words that Jesus said: 

"The field is the world." 'Twas spoken 

Two thousand years ago. 
There is fallow land unbroken 

In that field as yet, I trow. 

So I've packed my traps for starting; 

I leave with my grist unground. 
I shall not wait for a license, 

Or for the B. D.'s sound. 

I start for the South to-morrow, — 

Start with never a call, 
Save that of black hands reaching, 

And white that helpless fall. 



94 



GARTH TO GUY 

"God be wi' you, old fellow" 

I mean by this, 

May your good star guide; 
I mean by this, 

May no ill betide. 

I shout this after, 

I hail from the Rover; 
I've greeted few like, 

Though I've sailed the seas over. 
Kali Litkua, I. T. 



95 



KATAHDIN 

How old art thou, Katahdin? 

Go count the myriad years; 
Go tell the columned centuries 

Man's dimmed by blood and tears. 

I yet was old, Katahdin, 
Ere Time's car spun along; 

Ere soldiers fought a battle, 
Ere poet crooned a song. 

Ay, when the crowding centuries 

Have pushed men from their sight, 
I, yet as old, Katahdin, 

Shall dwell with God and night. 



96 



THE ROLLING STONE 

I've heard it said over and over 

That "rolling stones gather no moss,"- 

As if you could measure the Rover 
By the scale of profit and loss. 

'Tis a saying, no doubt, very clever, 
By me it shall ne'er be gainsaid ; 

You may harp on it now and forever, 
But I'm not in the moss trade. 



97 



THE FROGS OF BOONE 

I stood 'neath the shades of Harvard, 
Under the midnight moon, 

And my soul to herself was humming, 
Humming a low, sad tune. 

Up from the North came shimmering 

Aurora's roseate hue; 
The moonlight pale was glimmering 

From fleeces of gold and blue. 

Zigzag from the South came sailing 

Wild geese, a jolly crew; 
One lone frog was hailing, 

Hailing young Spring's debut. 

But it wasn't Aurora's shimmering, 
It was the moon's pale glimmering 

That held my heart in thrall ; 
No, nor the zigzag sailing, 
But 'twas the frog's weird hailing 

That moved me most of all. 

Perhaps in rules pathetic, 
Perhaps in rules poetic 

I here may make mistake ; 
But the heart, the heart is stronger, 
98 



THE FROGS OF BOONE 

Her rules for aye last longer; 
Though old, they're ever younger 
Than critic or cynic make. 

And I tell you, Neal, — no joking, — 
That this poor lone frog's croaking 

Cheats time of a score of years. 
And you and I together, 
In Spring's first sunny weather, 

Paddle in the pond. 
And now we pause and listen 
While gleeful eyes glisten 

To hear what the old frogs say. 

"Jug o' rum, jug o' rum." 
From the other shore the sound doth come, 
And away to the other side we dash ; 
And down he goes with a chug and a splash 
And we have abolished the toper. 

"Old Hodge got drunk, got drunk," 
And at him you hurl a rotten chunk ; 
And in he goes ku chug, ku klunk, 
And laughing we roll over and over. 

But now again the pond is still, 
And I am back to the Minister Mill, 

The Mill where I've brought my grist. 
But I tell you, Neal, no earthly grinding 
99 



THE FROGS OF BOONE 

Shall dim my eyes to the silver lining 

Of the clouds the sun has kissed. 
But were old Boone swamp all over, 
For her swamps and her frogs I still would 
love her. 



100 



BURIAL OF THE LUMBERMAN'S HORSE 

What? 

Pull off his shoes? 

I ruther guess not. 

If you try 
I think you'll find them 
A little too hot 
For a man like you to hold them. 

He's not in debt 
As I know on, 

And he's yarded many a spruce. 
He's held them level 
On a down-hill jump, 

Where they went like hell was loose. 

Once we yarded 
Out in the brush, 

And a two-foot spruce shot by 
That looked as if 
It had been willin' 

For Bill and me both to die. 
101 



BURIAL OF THE LUMBERMAN'S HORSE 

So I guess we'll bury him 
Shoes and all, 

If iron is heavy to tote; 
And if one of you 
Starts a single nail, 

I'll ram it down his throat. 



102 



'THE WOMANLY LEADETH US EVER' 

To the noble and pure, 
To the steadfast and sure; 
You beckon me ever 
To firmer endeavor, 
To the high and the holy, 
To toil for the lowly. 
You wed love to duty, 
You fill life with beauty; 
That life no more drifts, 
That the soul life uplifts, 
O Rhadha ! so true, 
This owe I to you. 



103 



THE WORLD TUSSLE 

(To a Classmate) 

Humph ! old boy, how goes it? 

How wags the world with you? 
I and the world have had it 

In a rough and tumble set-to. 

Like Jacob of old I've wrestled, 

Wrestled with the angel Hard Times. 

Adversity, some would call him, 
Some a lack of dimes. 

And many a time, my angel 

Has thrown me a good fair fall, 

Till it's become a thing so common, 
I mind it not at all. 

I get up so good-natured 

His grimness grows soft-featured, — 

He seems Hard Times no more. 
I thus his patience worry, 
Or else his favor curry, 

As Jacob did of yore. 
104 



THE WORLD TUSSLE 

And, Humph! I like this wrestling 
Better than cosy nestling 

In beds of eider-down. 
It doth the sinews toughen, 
It doth the soft hand roughen, 

It crowns with manhood's crown. 

Still that old, old story, 
Told to Israel's glory, 

Is true e'en now as then : 
That he who comes victorious, 
From wrestlings long laborious, 

Has power with God and men. 



105 



THE PEANUT 

nut of suave and yielding shell ! 
Nut of nuts, I like thee well. 

1 break thy shell down to a cup, 
And bottom upward drink thee up. 
I drink a health, Peanut, to thee, 

I drink to Beta Theta Pi! 

And as I drink'ithou turn'st to wine, 

To liquid days of auld lang syne. 

And now, before my swimming eyes 

I see a peanut stack arise, 

And Tau around that board is gathered ; 

By Greek cords once again we're tethered, 

And wit like lambent lightning plays. 

O most rare wit of those old days ! 

Kent, and Wood, and Atterbury, 
And whole-souled Shaw, with heart so merry,- 
That heart so sunny, frank, and gay, 
The clods have hid for many a day; 
And Kent and Wood have gone to seek 
Drawn by that heart so truly Greek. 
And Wise, with soul so undeformed, 
And Little, he who all hearts stormed ; 
And "Doug," the soft and oily lover, — 
Sunday, week-day, love all over. 
106 



THE PEANUT 

And then the Babes, Conger, Haines, 

Both Greeks, well-tempered hearts and brains; 

And Tuttle, Campbell, Pierce, and White, — 

I'm glad ye all are here tonight. 

The peanut stack, with "Dorg" on guard, 

The cider jug, half soft, half hard, — 

"Boys, here's to Hoosier half-and-half!" 

Then comes the ringing, joyous laugh, 

With toast and story, or with song, — 

The livelong hours are not long. 

Thanks, nut of suave and yielding shell ! 

Thanks for thy weirdly woven spell. 

O cuplet, once again I quaff ! 

This time, 'tis Hoosier half-and-half. 

Dead and alive, Young drinks to ye, 

A health to Beta Theta Pi. 



107 



MOTHER 

I wish I could feel to-night, mother, 
Your fingers go through my hair; 

I think 'twould set me right, 
And lighten this load of care. 

I'm weary of toiling up-hill, mother, 

Of rising to fall again, 
Weary of this yielding will, 

Of bearing this heart of pain. 

You know I would do right, mother, 

I would be pure and true : 
That I try to follow the right 

None knows better than you. 

I mind me of hearing you tell, mother, — 

I had just begun to lisp, — 
Of the sad, sad fate that befell 

Him who followed the Will-o'-the-Wisp. 

And when I'm sore misled, mother, 
Through bogs and deep quagmire, 

I think of what you said 
About the deceiving fire. 
108 



MOTHER 

But wherefore is the end, mother, 

Of all these trials sore? 
It may be I'm to be the friend 

Of those who are tempted more. 

For the feeling heart alone, mother, 

Bringeth Gilead's balm; 
The storms have raged in his own, 

Who another's breast would calm. 

Sometimes comes the thought, mother, 
Of the Christ we. love so well, 

Whom you think without sin or spot, — 
I sometimes think he fell. 

Else how said he what he did, mother, 

To the Pharisee-hunted girl? 
He knew and wisely he chid 

Those who the stone would hurl. 

And when the youth came running, mother, 

To do him homage as Lord, 
Was Jesus' rebuke but punning, — 

"Only the One is good?" 

I do not this to excuse, mother, 

In myself unmanly part ; 
'Tis because I can not refuse 

The kinship of His heart. 
109 



MOTHER 

If you knew how this inspires, mother, 

Life in this yielding clod, 
How for work and toil it fires 

And lifts my heart to God, 

You would not worry your heart, mother, 
About what your boy believes. 

Ah, God ! help him do his part, 
To soothe the soul that grieves. 

And when the war is o'er, mother, 

And I lay my armor by, 
When we meet on the farther shore, 

Why should we call it die? 

You'll forget, if in the strife, mother, 
My flag went down in the dust, 

If once or twice in my life 
I let my armor rust. 

You'll only see the scars, mother, 

That your boy has earned in the fight ; 

And perchance you may see the stars 
That gleam from his crown of light. 



110 



THE ASPEN TREE 

O quaking aspen, aspen quaking! 

Tree whose leaves for aye are shaking, 

Tree that is for aye aquiver, 

Tree that zephyrs send ashiver. 

Two of ye did guard the gate 

That mouthed the lane, so long and straight, 

That out from the dusty highway led 

Along the fields to the old homestead. 

There ye stood so feelingly, 

Looking down inquiringly, 

Watching ' us children come and go, 

Hither and thither, to and fro, 

Till some went forth from out the gate 

Ne'er to come back the lane so straight ; 

And I have wandered many a mile, 

And it's long since I saw the dear old smile 

That used to greet me at the gate 

At the foot of the lane, so long and straight. 

The smile that came so feelingly, 

And always fell so healingly, 

When I was sick and sore. 

Would I could see the aspen's quiver, 

Could hear again their rippling shiver ! 



Ill 



ALONE 



I saw an eagle cleave the air; 

He flew alone. 
I tracked a lion to his lair; 

He crouched alone. 

II. 

A river started to the sea ; 

It wound alone. 
A mountain rose up haughtily; 

It towered alone. 

III. 

I looked into eternity, — 

Lo ! God was alone. 
And then I sang on cheerily, 

But not alone. 



112 



WORK 

The gods delight in overthrow. 
When human pride is lying low, 
And human wit is wrecked quite, 
And chaos, old, comes down like night, 
Then the genius comes and reigns, 
And builds new temples, builds new fanes, 
Working as God works hitherto; 
Both work, the universe and you. 
Each stroke is graceful, primal, true; 
With God's grand ease we learn to do. 
All other work is trifling, marring, 
All other music discord, jarring. 
This the spheroid harmony, 
From out the still eternity. 



113 



THE BLADE OF GRASS 

blade of grass, you preach to me. 
You yield to life and law, 

You are the spring, ay, you are God, 
The same the ages saw. 

1 kneel to you, and lovingly 
My knees caress the sod; 

And sun, and sod, and blade of grass 
Are one : the Living God. 



114 



RESIGNATION 

I give, most willingly, 
I give myself to thee : 
Thou who art the wealth untold 
That gloweth in the sunset's gold ; 
Thou who art of elm the green, 
And in the lilac's purple sheen. 
Art thou, too, in poor mankind? 
Help me in them to find. 
May I see thee in my foes, 
When the issue 'gainst me goes. 
Come there good, or come there ill, 
May I ever see thee still. 

O God, this is hard to bear ! 
Yet I know I am Thy care — 
Know that the great tenderness 
E'en in this means a caress. 
May I lift my head above, — 
Nay, may I ope my heart to love, 
Love that welleth everywhere, 
Love that cometh unaware ! 



115 



UNITAS ET TRINITAS 

The Rain, the Snow, and the Mist, 
They're three in one, you wist. 
They come, they go, 
They ebb, they flow : 
The form they'll take 
You never know. 

The Good, the Beautiful, the True, 
The Old yet ever New, 
The track of the Same 
Is in each name ; 
They're three in one 
And one in three, 
Akin to God's own mystery. 
The Rain's the Good, the Ever Giving, 
Never thinking of receiving ; 
She giveth cups of water cool 
Unto Earth's thirsty soul. 
The Snow is the True: 
The Truth it hath its coldness, 
Its presence giveth boldness ; 
It crowns the hills, 
The valleys fills. 
116 



UNITAS ET TRINITAS 

The Mist is the Beautiful, 
Child undutiful, 
Earth born, heaven born. 
Sea and sky were lovelorn; 
Up springs a water sprite, 
And sea and sky at once unite. 

The Rain, the Snow, and the Mist, 

They are all one, you wist. 

The Good, the Beautiful, the True, 

They are old yet ever new; 

Ever blending, 

Clouds rending, 

With joy descending ; 

Now a joyous unity, 

Now a blessed Trinity, 

Everywhere Divinity. 



117 



HYMN TO VIRTUE 

Lap me not in Lydian measures, 
Let me hear storm chariots roll ; 

Give me toils, not softening pleasures, 
Grant me hardihood of soul. 

I would not lie in lovely valleys, 
I'd rather grip the mountain side; 

There leaps the soul in liveliest sallies 
Most where danger doth abide. 

Thrill me, fill me with music shrillest, — 

With blasts of wind, with shrieks of storm; 

Serenely, queenly, the soul sits stillest 
Where sounds the wildest war alarms. 

It lives, it gives, for aye grows younger ; 

It only dies when honor's dead. 
Its pains are gains. I feed on hunger, 

When virtue beckons me ahead. 



118 



MY CHRISTMAS 

To-night I sit in the shadows 
And muse on that legend old, — 

How Christ was born in a manger, 
To bring the lost to the fold. 

I keep not that far-off Christmas 
Whose years betwixt us roll, — 

The one that I keep is near me, 
'Tis the Christmas of my soul. 

I think of that morning twilight, 

The twilight of my soul, 
When the Star in the East's first glimmer 

Did on its darkness roll. 

I hear the chant of the angels, 
The angels that guard the soul, — 

"Immanuel, God is with thee, 
With thee to make thee whole." 

I feel the Lord Christ growing, 

Growing within my heart ; 
And the life into new being 

Does all within me start. 
119 



MY CHRISTMAS 

I hear the devils shrieking, 

The devils of my heart, 
As at the word of the Master 

They one by one depart. 

I fear I see a Judas, 

A Judas in my heart, 
That would sell the Lord Christ Jesus; 

And act a traitor's part. 

I hear the shout of the rabble, 

The rabble of my soul, 
Crying, "Crucify this Jesus; 

We will not His control !" 

Ah ! in the grave they lay Him, 

The Roman soldiers part ; 
And o'er that grave securely 

Place the marble of my heart. 

And though they watch and ward it, 
These hirelings of my soul, 

The angels come in the night-time ; 
Away the stone they roll. 

And when my Lord is risen, 
And the darkness doth depart, 

The first who comes to greet Him 
Is the Mary of my heart. 
120 



MY CHRISTMAS 

Thus I ever keep my Christmas, 

Keep it in tearful joy, 
Not cursing the Jewish blindness 

That did its Lord destroy. 

For I look within my own heart : 
I see that, again and again, 

I crucify and slay Him, 

The God who dwells with men. 



121 



A SONG OF FREEDOM 

O River ! O River ! 

As you go to the sea 
Forever and aye, 

So flowing and free, 

You bow to men's burdens, 
You grind in their mills ; 

Yet free, fresh, and savage, 
You flow as God wills. 

O River! O River! 

Going down to the sea, 
Oh, fill me ! oh, fill me ! 

That I, too, may flow free. 

Though I bow to the burden, 
Though I grind in the mill, 

May I go to the ocean 
Untamed as God still. 



122 



WINE 

Wood nymphs now offer to mortals 
The oldest of old, old wine. 

Wine brewed by the immortals, 
But not from the juice of the vine. 

Wine of which spake Mencus 

Thousands of years ago ; 
Wine of which knew Jesus 

The secret and hidden flow. 

Wine in whose wine press 

Thou must walk alone, 
Wine of the fruit of sorrow 

Wrung from a sad world's moan. 

There's music in glasses clinking, 
Joy lurks in the fruit of the vine. 

But then it's only a symbol 
Of this oldest of old, old wine. 



123 



THE MORNING-GLORY 

Ah, the Glory of the Morning ! 

None other hour dare wear thee ; 

None other time dare bear thee ; 
Else thy beauty would be scorning. 

Thou with eyes so pure and bright, 
Some spirit sure has tended thee, 
And lovingly befriended thee, 

Throughout the darksome night. 

Thou with eye so softly blue, 

Thou art thyself a spirit ; 

And thine eye's hue dost inherit 
From the sky thou droppest through. 

Thou whose hue is deeper, 

God's azure depths have glinted 
Across thee, and have hinted 

That God himself's thy keeper. 

Then lovely Morning-glory, 

Keep thy comings, keep thy comings, 
Keep thy bloomings and thy blowings, 

Keep them sacred to Aurora. 
124 



THE MORNING GLORY 

Else thy beauty will be scorning, 
If other hour dare wear thee, 
If other time dare bear thee, 

Thou Glory of the Morning ! 



125 



LEGEND OF KATAHDIN 



The Penobscot Indian guides will go with you to Mt. Ka- 
tahdin. They will not go on it. It is sacred as the abode of 
their god Pomola, who sometimes rode a black horse shod 
with fire. The panthers were Pomola's dogs. 



Where Wassatiquoik's waters 
Ride hot from the mountain, 
Dashing mad past Katahdin 
With clang and with clatter ; 
Where the pine spreads his carpet, 
There the braves had gathered, 
Squaws and sachems 
By scores and by hundreds, 
Giving in marriage their sachem's daughter 
To a chief of Penobscot. 
The braves have done boasting, 
How they had heard the dogs of Pomola ; 
Heard them yelling 
And not fled affrighted. 
Now they have taken 
Themselves to their dancing, 
Young panthers frisking, 
Wild steeds prancing. 
126 



LEGEND OF KATAHDIN 

Apart stands Medulmah, 
Whose feet are lighter 
Than the light-footed brooks 
That trip from Katahdin. 
Afar look the eyes 
Whose glance is brighter 
Than the spotted fawn 
That you hunt to the mountain; 
For she goes like the fawn, 
To the lodge of the sachem, 
That you carry and pen 
In your parks and gardens. 

She hears not the noise 

Of their shouting and dancing; 

She is giving herself 

To the God Pomola; 

She is asking help 

Of the God of the mountain. 

"I would rather rest 

On the couch of the storm god, 

Than panther's hide 

Of chief I love not." 

A screech and a yell 
That swallows their din, 
And a light not of pine knot 
Is blazing in. 

127 



LEGEND OF KATAHDIN 

Pomola on steed 

Than midnight is blacker; 

Hoofs shod with fire 

Than flame is brighter; 

Dogs whose yelping 

Than war-whoop is wilder. 

Medulmah alone 
Starts not at their baying ; 
She is praying to her God 
She meant her praying. 
A spring, and she sits 
On the steed shod with fire; 
Then away up the ridge, 
Up the peak higher, higher ; 
They see her ascend 
To the home of Pomola. 
No brave dare follow, 
That pathway was holy. 



128 



THE CALL-O-METER 

Ah, the meter of the visit : 

'Tis art's triumph most exquisite, 

An instrument discreet and rare ; 

Adjusted, this being done with care, 

It will tell you to a dot 

If you are a bore or not. 

As the fluid rises, falls, 

You shall gauge your evening calls ; 

For the fluid is at one 

And stands the selfsame base upon 

As the life-force of your host. 

You must vanish like a ghost 

Should you see it downward sink. 

And upon the whole I think 

It were neater and completer 

To call the thing a bore-o-meter. 



129 



THE WILD ROSE 

The sun is setting ; 

Let it set. 
And I am fretting ; 

Let me fret. 
The sun was made to rise and set, 
And man was born to fume and fret. 
Let it set. 
Let me fret. 

Just then a wild rose reaching out 
Came looking in my face ; 
Came looking up so tenderly, 
Came reaching out with grace; 
Came with the wind quivering, 
Soft, but not with fear shivering. 
God and very God it seemed 
Was looking from that flower ; 
Looking out so lovingly, 
Tenderly, reprovingly. 
Lone is thy lot deemed ; 
And hast thou no companion? 
130 



THE WILD ROSE 

See, I hover in the flower ; 
In the pine-tree lurks my power, 
In the dust beneath thy feet, 
In the looks that rose looks meet ; 
Thus said, and I was comforted. 
South Carolina. 



God is God. Oh, fear not ! 
The Rescuer's tramp you hear not ; 
But do the work you have in hand, 
For I who Am, am in the land. 



131 



L'ENVOI 

Milestones of my past 

Whether they will or will not last, 

That I leave to another. 

They were the best I could rear, O brother 

I swiftly built 

As I passed along, 

Swiftly built 

While singing my song. 

Rhythmic strokes are flowing. 

Should they wilder, 

Rather than guide, 

Pity the builder, 

Step aside, 

Into thine own path going. 



132 



